LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



mi^V- ^mm¥ ln*^c?.M- 

ShelU 



Of 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Christian Missions 



Nineteenth Century 



X' 



BY 



REV. ELBERT S. TODD, D.D. 



■:l 




OCT 31^890 : ]y/ 



f'V/il 



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NEW YORK: HUNT 6^ EA TON 

CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON ^ STOWE 

1890 



Copyright, 1890, by 

HUNT & EATON, 

New York. 



TfiM Library 

Oi- CoHGRESS 
WASHINGTON 






I 
t 



3? 
2 



.0 



TO THE 
CONGREGATION 

OF 

GRACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BALTIMORE, 



WITH A KINDNESS TRULY CHRISTIAN, AND A THOUGHTFULNESS 

PECULIARLY ITS OWN, HAS MADE FIVE YEARS OF THE 

writer's service SEEM BUT A FEW DAYS, 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 

IS 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



BY THE AUTHOR. 

Baltimore, Md., yuly i, 1890. 



PREFACE 



Foreign travelers who are also victims of 
caccethes scribendi no longer attempt to write 
up Europe, or even any single country. They 
content themselves with a notice of places 
here and there which, not being on the beaten 
track of travel, have escaped the attention of 
traveling book-makers. Such is the present 
volume ; no attempt at a discussion of Chris- 
tian missions, but an effort to call attention to 
some phases of this many-sided theme which 
seem to have been neglected. 

The work of missions has too often been 
regarded as a movement entirely modern, and 
so one that has no precedents by which it may 
be guided or lessons of warning which should 
be heeded. Gross injustice has thus often 
been done to the Church of the Middle Ages 
and of apostolic times. The experience of 
the past has been gained at too great a sacri- 
fice and is altogether too valuable to be thus 



6 Preface. 

thrown away. The Roman Catholic Church 
may not be a safe guide, but to refuse to re- 
ceive lessons of wisdom which her history 
furnishes is equal folly with the captain who 
refuses to allow for rocks in the channel be- 
cause they were made known by the wreck of 
a rival boat. 

An effort is made in these pages to suggest 
some of the most obvious of these lessons, and 
especially to call attention to valuable hints 
w^hich they furnish concerning the question of 
methods. 

The author omits the usual appeal to the 
critics for mercy, knowing that so small a 
spread of sail on literary waters will be likely 
to escape their notice altogether. 

BaIuTIUOK^, Jammry i, 1890, 



CONTENTS 



!• PAGE 

The Conversion of our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 9 

11. 
The Missionary Triumphs of Paganism 19 

III. 
Christianity an Oriental Religion 32 

IV. 

Characteristics of Ethnic Religions 41 

V. 
The Solidarity of Humanity 68 

VI. 
War and the Progress of Christianity 80 

VII. 
Commerce and Christianity 90 

VIII. 
The Humanitarian View. 100 



8 Contents. 

IX. PAGE 

Statesmanship and Missions 114 

X. 
Methods 140 

XL 
Success 162 



Christian Missions 
in the nineteenth century. 



L 

THE CONVERSION OF OUR ANGLO-SAXON 
ANCESTORS. 

Ex uno disce omnes. 

Grave doubts exist in the minds of many 
as to whether the present attempt to evangel- 
ize the pagan and semi-pagan nations among 
which our missions are situated is not an at- 
tempt at the impossible ; at least, whether the 
success of such an undertaking is not highly 
improbable. Such opinions are openly ad- 
vanced in the confidence that at least no one 
can show that they are without foundation. 
But what if it be answered that such an ob- 
jection is at variance with the plainest facts of 
history ; that not only are there numerous 
examples of such conversion, but that our 
own Anglo-Saxon ancestors were thus made 



10 Christian Missions. 

Christians, so that we ourselves are striking 
examples of what is declared to be impossible ? 
The best answer to the charge that a thing 
cannot be done is to show that it has been 
done repeatedly, and what has been done 
may, under like circumstances, be done again. 

No more striking illustration of this appeal 
to facts could be desired than that furnished 
by the conversion from paganism to Christian- 
ity of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons who were 
the progenitors of the English-speaking race, 
the history of which is both a thrilling story 
and a convincing argument. Tacitus informs 
us what unpromising subjects for civilization, 
to say nothing of Christianity, these tribes 
were while they still dwelt in Germany. 

Gibbon speaks of them as clothed in scanty 
garments made of skins of animals or of coarse 
linen, and dwelling in low huts, which were 
constructed without use of stone, brick, or 
tiles. For sustenance they depended on wild 
game, their domestic herds, and corn, which 
seems to have been the only cultivated prod- 
uct. As for money — they had none, nor at 
that time any written language. 

The care of the household, as well as the 



Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. i i 

management of the land and cattle, was left to 
those too old to hunt or fight, or to women 
and slaves. War was regarded as the only oc- 
cupation worthy of men. They were immod- 
erately addicted to drunkenness and gambling, 
and gloried in spending w^hole days and nights 
at the table, where the blood of friends was 
often shed in drunken brawls. 

Woman seems to have held a higher place 
among them than among many barbarous 
tribes, though most of the drudgery fell to her 
lot. The Saxons accepted, though they were 
too uncultured to reduce to poetry, the sen- 
timent, 

" Who loves not wine, woman, and song, 
Remains a fool his whole life long." 

They worshiped a variety of visible deities, 
among which were fire, earth, and the ocean, 
together with many imaginary deities which 
were supposed to preside over the most im- 
portant interests of life. 

The names of the days of the week still recall 
the gods that were then worshiped. They 
had no carved images or visible representations 
of the gods, because they knew nothing of 
sculpture even in its rudest forms. We know 



12 Christian Missions. 

little of their modes of worship, save that 
they had a priesthood, a complicated system 
of divination, and believed that a human sacri- 
fice, now and then, was the most acceptable 
offering to the gods. 

" As their gods were, so their laws were; 

Thor the strong could rave and steal ; 
So through many a peaceful inlet 

Tore the Norsemen's eager keel.'* 

Such were our ancestors — little better than 
savages and not as far advanced in civilization 
as the average pagan nation of to-day — when 
they crossed the English channel, in the middle 
of the fifth century, and took up their abode 
in Britain. They brought with them their 
language, customs, and religion, and departed 
from the old life only in that they now united 
against the Britons, whom they rapidly sub- 
dued, leaving every-where monuments of 
human bones and ruins of homes and cities. 
When they had subdued and well-nigh ex- 
terminated their foes they turned their arms, 
as of old, against one another, and Saxon, 
Jute, and Angle were engaged in an indis- 
criminate struggle as to which should be 
greatest. Here was pagan soil, pure and 



Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 13 

simple as any that either continent can now 
furnish. 

What more hopeless task seemingly than 
for the Prince of peace to conquer these in- 
veterate fighters, the Lord of purity to make 
consistent followers out of these constitutional 
drunkards and gamblers, and the one God 
come to be accepted where there were gods 
enough to furnish names for the days of the 
week, and, if desirable, for those of the month ! 
Yet such a result was brought about and by 
the very means we are now using for a similar 
work in pagan lands. It began with Gregory, 
on whose tomb at Rome is inscribed : 

" To English Saxons Christian truth he taught, 
And a believing flock to heaven brought." 

Bede, the earliest historian of the English, 
tells us that while yet a monk, Gregory wan- 
dered through the market-place, which then 
was probably the old Forum of Trajan, and 
saw a group of slaves of fair skin and golden 
hair, who were waiting for a purchaser. Greg- 
ory at once entered into conversation with the 
owner of the slaves, of which Bede has the fol- 
lowing account : 



14 Christian Missions. 

^* From what country do these slaves come ? '* 
Gregory asked. The trader answered, *^ They 
are Angles.'* ** Not Angles, but angels," he 
remarked, *^ with faces so angel-like. From 
what country come they ? '* ** They come," 
said the merchant, '' from Deira," pronouncing 
the word, as if in derision, De-ira. ^^ Yes, 
plucked from God's ire and called to Christ's 
mercy. " said the monk. ^^ And who is their 
king?" When told that his name was Alia, 
he remarked that it sounded a little like Al- 
leluia, and he went away wondering if means 
could not be found to send the Gospel to the 
Angles. 

Seven years after he was made supreme 
pontiff at Rome, and immediately appointed 
Augustine to the work of carrying out his 
cherished desire for the conversion of the 
Angles. Augustine, with twenty companions, 
set out, yet the goal seemed so far and the 
issue of their undertaking so uncertain, that 
after a few months he returned, begging that 
he might be ** spared from undertaking so toil- 
some and dangerous a journey." He was bid- 
den to persevere, and A. D. 597 this pioneer 
band landed on the very spot on the coast of 



Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 15 

Britain where the wild Saxon tribes had 
landed on their first entrance into the country 
one hundred and fifty years before. 

The Saxons had conquered the Britons ; 
now this band of twoscore had come to con- 
quer them. The way seems to have been pre- 
pared for them in a providential manner. 
Ethelbert, king of that part of the island, had 
married Bertha, a French princess, and a Chris- 
tian. Through her influence Augustine re- 
ceived a hearty welcome, and at once com- 
menced his labors at Canterbury. These mis- 
sionary fathers not only preached, but cleared 
the land, drained the bogs, plowed, sowed the 
fields, built houses, and planted vineyards — a 
method very like to a much discussed modern 
self-supporting plan. 

Such success attended their labors that at 
the end of a year the king was baptized, to 
the great joy of his Christian wife, and the 
Christmas following several thousands of the 
most prominent of his subjects followed the 
example of the king. Slowly, but certainly, 
and for all time, the old pagan faith gave way 
to Christianity; the heathen temples were 
cleansed and converted into churches, and the 



i6 Christian Missions. 

old gods were neglected or destroyed. The 
foundation of the first English cathedral was 
soon laid at Canterbury, and a monastery built 
for the training of missionaries, who were sent 
into all parts of the kingdom. There were 
times when it seemed as if the tide was going 
backward ; when missionary graves multiplied 
on every hand ; but new re-enforcements con- 
stantly arrived from Rome to fill the vacant 
places, so that, in the space of about one hun- 
dred years, all the English kingdoms be- 
came Christian — the inhabitants of the Isle of 
Wight being the last to cleave to the idols of 
the fathers. 

So completely was the work done that there 
is not a single worshiper of Thor or Odin in 
existence, and only a few names left to speak 
of a once unquestioned religious faith. This 
work was accomplished under circumstances 
precisely like those by which Christianity seeks 
to do a similar work in our day. 

Augustine and his companions went to a 
people that *' asked not after them.'' Our 
Saxon fathers were as content with their re- 
religion as the most self-satisfied pagans 
of our own day. The missionaries had no 



Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 17 

military power on which to depend ; not even 
a single soldier. Yet they won the day, and 
the English-speaking race is at least not 
pagan. It does not follow, because the 
Saxons abandoned their idols and became 
Christians, that therefore other nations will 
do so ; but it does follow, the attempt to 
evangelize them is not a visionary project. 
What more convincing fact could be conceived 
to show that the modern missionary move- 
ment is not chimerical ! 

All that is now urged to show that failure 
must be inevitable w^as then present. Are 
modern pagans dark and benighted ? So 
were they. Is there a seemingly insurpassa- 
ble barrier of language now ? So was there 
then. Are pagan lands far away? Britain 
was much farther from Rome, if you count by 
time and expense required for the journey. 
Are the pagans of to-day wedded to their 
idols? So were they. Do they positively re- 
fuse often to hear? So did they. Have these 
nothing on which to depend but the might of 
truth and the blessing of God? They much 
more. Add to this that the Anglo-Saxon 
character has been shown to be most difficult 



1 8 Christian Missions. 

to impress because of its strength and the 
tenacity of its hold on all that is peculiar to 
it. The conversion of such a race makes the 
evangelization of any other race an easy 
problem. 

Paul intimates that he, the chief of sinners, 
was converted for an example that no one 
might ever despair. In like manner let those 
who doubt the possibility of modern missions 
look to the triumph of the Gospel over the 
Saxons and take heart. 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 19 



II. 
missionary triumphs of paganism. 

Fas est ab hoste doceri. 

The present condition of pagan lands, where 
error seems to be so intrenched by centuries 
of undisputed sway, seems to some to not 
only create a doubt that Christianity can ever 
be dominant there, but to constitute a conclu- 
sive proof that it cannot. But from the same 
condition comes a class of facts that strengthens 
our faith not only in the possibility, but in the 
entire practicability of the scheme of modern 
missions. It is the old argument of judging 
the future by the past, and reasoning from 
the fact that a thing has been done that it can 
be done again. 

To feel the force of argument from this 
quarter we have only to call to mind the fact 
that the religious systems with which Chris- 
tianity has to contend are not native to 
the region where they now flourish. They 
are themselves foreign religions, and obtained 



20 Christian Missions. 

ascendency by the very means we propose to 
use in replacing them by Christianity. After 
noticing their struggles and triumphs it is 
perfectly natural to ask, Why may not Chris- 
tianity repeat all this? 

With a survey of our mission fields the ar- 
gument strengthens at every step. The 
traveler in Rome meets countless priests and 
abbots, pilgrimages and processions. Crosses 
adorn the most imposing buildings and dangle 
from the girdle of both priest and nun. Cathe- 
drals and churches are on every hand. Chris- 
tianity is dominant. But one feels inclined to 
ask, Where is the old Roman faith ? Where 
is the temple of Janus, where that of Mars? 
Here are the ruins of the Pantheon, but where 
are the gods ? Where are the devout worshipers 
of Bacchus, and the devotees of the Saturnalia? 
These Italians are true descendants of the old 
Romans, but where is the faith of the fathers ? 
It has passed away. It has been entirely 
superseded by another. The work began with 
a few refugees from Jerusalem who fled from 
persecution, and were not only Christians, but 
had a religion that would bear transplanting. 
From time to time re-enforcements arrived, 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 21 

the most noteworthy being a certain man of 
Tarsus. 

In three hundred years, without a single 
sword-stroke, or spear-thrust, or battle-shout, 
the work was done, and the Roman Empire, 
by virtue of an imperial edict, as well as by 
conversion of the emperor and of the chief 
men of the realm, was pagan no longer. We 
certainly gain no discouragement concerning 
the work in which we are engaged from notic- 
ing that imperial Rome, the nation of iron, 
succumbed to the preaching of a few Jews. 

Across the Ionian Sea is another instance, in 

"Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence." 

When Paul landed there he found the city 
wholly given to idolatry. 

Not only was the temple of Jupiter Olym- 
pus entirely given up to the statues of gods and 
heroes, but more than three thousand of these 
were scattered through the citadel, the forum, 
and places of public resort, so that as Pausa- 
nius says, it was easier to find a god than a 
man in Athens. Idolatry was embellished 
and defended by all that sculpture, poetry, and 
music could do in the period of their highest 



22 Christian Missions. 

development. It seemed then, so far as man 
could forecast the future, that Olympus would, 
to the last generation, echo with the praises 
of Zeus and the goddess Minerva hold un- 
rivaled sway in the Parthenon. Minerva, the 
goddess of wisdom, if appealed to at this time, 
would doubtless have informed Paul and Bar- 
nabas that it would be quite useless to attempt 
to supersede this religion of the beautiful with 
a faith that permitted no attempt at outward 
representation of the divine. That '' the un- 
known God " would ever succeed in banishing 
all traces of Minerva Pan, Venus, and the rest 
of the three thousand, seemed — and was — most 
preposterous. But where are now these gods 
and their worshipers? The streets of that 
ancient city are now full again. The inhab- 
itants boast their descent from the men of 
Marathon and Thermopylae. The ruins of 
some of the old temples still stand — but the 
traveler who might chance to ask a modern 
Greek in the streets of Athens where the wor- 
shipers of Pan and Juno met would be an- 
swered by a vacant stare. 

The religion of ancient Greece has perished 
so completely that all our knowledge concern- 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 23 

ing it for at least a thousand years past has 
been derived from the books. It certainly 
does not show that the ruder forms of worship 
found in Japan, Korea, and Bulgaria cannot be 
superseded by Christianity to notice that that 
precise work was done long ago in classic 
Greece, 

** Great is Diana of the Ephesians,** shouted 
the surging crowds of Ephesus as they hustled 
Gains and Aristarchus, preachers of a new re- 
ligion, into the theater and before the magis- 
trates. The temple of Diana was accounted 
one of the seven wonders of the world, and 
the image of the goddess, according to the ac- 
cepted tradition, had fallen down from heaven. 
If this was so she should have been able to 
defend herself from the new religion, which 
swept her, Dagon-like, into the dust and ob- 
livion. Let the weary workers along the Ganges 
and the Yang-tsze-Kiang, with the millions 
who help in their maintenance, think of Diana 
and take heart. 

Of Egypt, land cf sphinxes and riddles, one 
thing we know certainly : that in earliest times 
she was idolatrous. The gods of the land and 
of her great river had innumerable temples 



24 Christian Missions. 

dedicated to their service. The ruins of vast 
buildings once connected with idolatrous Avor- 
ship, to say nothing of the pyramids, speak of 
the unquestioned sway of a religion that is now 
of the things that were. 

The dark-skinned Bedouin who helps the 
traveler up the slopes of the pyramid, cannot 
tell any thing about that religion, indeed, he 
never heard of it. He only knows that he and 
all his are Mohammedans. So far as he 
knows that religion always was all but uni- 
versal in Egypt. 

But the traveler knows that the religion 
which had its rise in Arabia in the seventh 
century came into Egypt along the track 
which Israel took in going out of bondage, and 
after an eventful struggle conquered, and 
mosque and muezzin and Koran triumphed 
where, so late as the time of Ptolemy, a Roman 
soldier was put to death for killing one of the 
gods of Egypt, which in the city where his 
legion was then stationed happened to be a 
cat. The Christian who studies the hiero- 
glyphics of the great monolith brought from 
Egypt to America may recall, with growing 
faith, the fact that it has been the silent wit- 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 25 

ness of a complete religious revolution among 
the swarthy natives that once swarmed around 
its base, who, from the w^orship of Isis and' 
the sacred bull, became ardent followers of 
the false prophet. The pessimist concerning 
foreign missions finds no food for doubt here. 
The greatest problem that confronts Christ- 
ianity to-day is that which presents itself in 
India. The ruts of religious thought and 
practice are so deep that it seems to be im- 
possible to get out of them. Two hundred 
million people there seem to be welded to- 
gether into one mass that is as impervious to 
religious impressions, other than their own, 
as the reefs of the coral islands, which are 
made of the bodies of many times tw^o hun- 
dred million coral insects, are to the waves 
that break upon them. It is a common re- 
mark in India that every thing seems stereo- 
typed, or run into unchanging and imperishable 
molds. Yet nothing is more certain than 
that the India of to-day is not the India of 
two thousand years ago. The change is, in 
part, to be attributed to a religious ascetic 
known to the world as Buddha, who was 
born up under the shadow of the Himalaya 



26 Christian Missions. 

Mountains. The religion of which he was the 
author, and which is now accepted by at least 
one fourth of the human race, antagonized 
Brahmanism at every point. Brahmanism had 
elaborate ceremonies ; Buddhism was simple 
in form and doctrine. The one held to the 
despotism of caste ; the other proclaimed 
*^ all men are brothers.'* 

The first was utterly selfish and narrow ; the 
second demanded self-sacrifice and the most 
boundless benevolence. The first was in- 
trenched by centuries of careful observance ; 
the second started with a humble ascetic who 
had not a single soldier to back up his claim, 
nor a rupee in his treasury. There was no 
modern pessimist on the ground to tell him 
that it was no use, so he commenced to preach 
and make followers. All the world now knows 
that in one hundred years Buddhism conquered 
India. A reaction occurred a century after- 
ward by which Brahmanism again recovered 
its hold on the people, and Buddhism was ex- 
pelled. But though Buddhism was driven out 
of India its spirit remained to impress for all 
time the millions of that land. It had vitality 
still left sufficient to send its missionaries to 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 2j 

Cashmere and Nepaul, to the Dekkan, to the 
people of Mysore, to Borneo and Ceylon, to 
Thibet and Tartary, where it still lives and 
rules triumphant, having more followers than 
any other religion. 

What does the notable success of Buddhism 
at the beginning, and the still more remark- 
able ones further on, show but that no nation 
has a stereotyped and unchanging faith, and 
that the propagation of new forms of religion 
is not only possible anywhere, but has actually 
taken place almost everywhere ? 

Nor should the triumph of Mohammedanism 
in India be forgotten. However it came into 
India, even though it might have been forced 
upon the people in the beginning at the point 
of the sword, yet when the English came to 
take a prominent part in Indian affairs they 
found Mohammedanism growing with remark- 
able rapidity, and that without any use of the 
sword. But for the interference of the British 
there is little doubt but India would be a Mo- 
hammedan country to-day. As it is, one fifth 
of the population is of the Mussulman faith, 
and the increase is steady. Unless we wish 
to claim for Mohammedanism more truth, 



28 Christian Missions. 

zeal, and adaptation to humanity than we are 
willing to allow to Christianity we must admit 
that what the religion of the false prophet has 
done the religion of Christ may do. It is at 
least encouraging for the missionary in India 
and for his friends at home to remember that 
the undertaking in which he is engaged can- 
not be visionary or impracticable, since it has 
already been accomplished, and more than 
once, on that same soil and under less favor- 
able circumstances. 

But the most striking example of successful 
missionary effort is furnished by China. Up 
to the Christian era China had only two 
forms of worship : that of Confucius, her great 
sage, and the system of Loo-tse, called Tao- 
ism. The people were wedded to these sys- 
tems, as they generally are to whatever has the 
sanction of age. Whatever may be charged 
against the Chinese, no enemy ever accused 
the nation of being fickle, or in love with new 
ideas and ways. 

Buddhism knocked at this unpromising door 
in the first century of our era. That the 
door was opened somehow, that Buddhism 
came in and has met with astonishing success 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 29 

are facts of history. We only know that 
while the new religion was not always left to 
make converts without opposition it never 
met force with force or used any but 
peaceable, and, on the whole, vrorthy means 
to accomplish its ends. The Buddhist temples 
that every-where abound throughout the em- 
pire, and the men of the '^yellow robe " that 
are met on all roads — and with much gratifi- 
cation by the traveler, if he happens to be a 
stranger and in need of protection — testify to 
the profound respect in which this religion is 
held by the masses, no matter how much it 
may be decried by the Chinese literati. 

Here, again, is matter for reflection con- 
cerning the possibility of the success of Chris- 
tianity in China. This staid, conservative 
people, whose most cherished motto is : 

*' Nor change nor improvement can there be ; 
As did our fathers, so do we," 

so far forgot or set aside their traditional policy 
that they accepted Buddhism, and, barring 
some local opposition, gave it a welcome. 
Shall we find in this proof that they may not 
do so in case of Christianity? May not the 
missionary in China be justified in thinking he 



30 Christian Missions. 

sees in the very prevalence of Buddhism, the 
religion which he must oppose, reason for en- 
couragement concerning Christianity? Bud- 
dhism, a foreign religion, has succeeded ; there- 
fore Christianity may. The former is saying 
to the latter, like the guide on the mountains, 
who himself climbed up a steep, to the traveler 
who seeks to do so, "' I have gotten up, there- 
fore you can.'* 

Japan is a still more recent instance. Shin- 
toism, the religion of the native inhabitants, 
gave way to Buddhism, and now the struggle 
between the two is relaxing on account of a 
still more formidable rival for the faith 
and affection of the Japanese. If Christianity 
is charged with being a foreign religion it can 
say to Buddhism, *' So are you.'' Equally 
striking illustration in the same direction might 
be found in the conquests of the missionary 
band that from the head-quarters of lona, in 
the sixth century, spread the triumphs of the 
Gospel over northern Europe; the splendid 
successes of Martin of Tours, in Gaul ; of Bon- 
iface, in Germany ; of Ulphilas among the 
Goths, and Patrick among the Irish. There is 
scarcely a land or people where an illustration 



Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 31 

may not be found of a religious faith that at 
one time has been unquestioned but sub- 
sequently was greatly modified or entirely set 
aside by a better. If the present attempt to 
convert the pagan nations to Christianity 
shall prove a success it will only be a repetition 
of what has often been before. If the his- 
torian of the future is obliged to turn to dust- 
covered books to find out what kind of 
religions Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Moham- 
medanism were, and where they prevailed, it will 
only be a recurrence of what has been. 
Modern missionary efforts may fail entirely, 
but they are not attempts at the impossible, 
or even improbable, of which all the past is 
witness. 



32 Christian Missions. 



III. 

CHRISTIANITY AN ORIENTAL RELIGION. 
Ex oriente lux. 

Still another objection arises against the 
attempt of modern missions to introduce Chris- 
tianity into the East, this time coming in the 
name of science. The law of the survival of 
the fittest, which has been used to explain the 
diversified forms and varied homes of the 
animal life of the globe, is held to be equally 
true when applied to the various religions of 
the earth, which, we are told, had their origin 
in given localities because there were the 
conditions necessary to give them birth. The 
same conditions surrounding the origin would, 
of course, constitute the environment most 
favorable to subsequent development. Nature 
has thus set geographical bounds to the relig- 
ions of the earth, and any attempt to pass these 
limits might be expected to bring upon the 
transgressor the penalty which Romulus visited 
on his brother Remus for leaping his wall. 



Christianity an OraENTAL Religion. 33 

*^You are born Christians/' writes Volney, 
in his Ruin of Empires^ ^' on the banks of 
the Tiber, Mussulmans on those of the Eu- 
phrates, idolators on the Indus, just as you 
are born fair in cold climates or sable under 
the scorching sun of Africa/' Gibbon quotes 
with approval the prevalent maxim, ^* In every 
country that form of superstition which re- 
ceives the sanction of time and experience is 
the best adapted to the climate and the 
inhabitants." In harmony with this we are 
reminded that the religion of the dreamer 
Sokya-Muni is just adapted to the enervating 
climate where it had its origin and still thrives, 
and the rude orgies of the South Sea Islanders 
to the peculiar condition and temperament of 
the dwellers on those wave-washed shores. 
The conclusion is then drawn that since Chris- 
tianity has its home almost solely in the Oc- 
cident, as paganism in the Orient, any attempt 
to replace the one by the other, in the light 
of modern science, would be as foolish as to 
attempt to displace the reindeer and the 
polar bear from the arctic regions to which 
they are adapted, and substitute the zebra and 
the camel, which are at home only in the heat 



34 Christian Missions. 

of the desert. Let us be scientific for once, 
while we apply this law to the proposed intro- 
duction of Christianity into the East. In doing 
so we need to recognize the fact that while 
Christianity is now the prevailing religion of 
western nations, it is, after all, a stranger there, 
its true home being that very East into which 
we seek to re-introduce it. Christianity is in all 
respects an oriental religion. It was born in 
Mesopotamia, cradled by the Nile, given shape 
and form in a corner of Arabia. 

Its wise men were all Orientals. The 
prophets were all men of the far East. They 
taught and wrote in oriental languages, used 
figures and modes of speech that only an 
Oriental can fully understand. The Saviour 
of the world was an Oriental by virtue of his 
race, language, style of thought and dress. 
Christianity in its ancient and modern form 
was almost exclusively confined to the Eastern 
Hemisphere for forty-five hundred years. 

To be strictly scientific we must conclude 
that, while Christianity can never have a per- 
manent home in the West, or hope to overthrow 
the worship of Odin, or the Great Spirit, it may 
be expected to grow and thrive abundantly in 



Christianity an Oriental Religion. 35 

the East, if given a fair chance. However it 
may be with the former of these conclusions, 
the latter is no doubt w^ell founded. The home 
of Christianity is the East, and there are the 
conditions necessary for its grandest success. 
The Bible itself can never be properly appre- 
ciated in the West, because it must there be 
received as it is, as a translation of the Bible. 

The poems of Homer, or even the more 
modern works of Dante and Goethe, when 
translated, lose most of their beauty and force, 
and the poems of Job, David, and Isaiah suffer 
no less when put in an English dress, to say 
nothing of the words of Jesus and Paul. In the 
East, while neither the Hebrew nor Greek lan- 
guage is now spoken, yet languages so akin to 
them are that they may be there appreciated 
as they cannot be here. Even when the 
language of the sacred book is rightly in- 
terpreted the customs and institutions of 
the country, the molds in which the writer's 
thoughts unconsciously run, and a thousand 
other things which help to reveal the meaning 
of the speaker, defy all attempts at transla- 
tion. The Koran of Mohammed, over which 
the Arabs are enraptured, when put into the 



2,6 Christian Missions. 

English by Sale, is both dull and insipid. 
The reason is that the translator could not, 
with the Arabic words, translate the sands of 
the desert, the nomad life of the wandering 
tribes, the strange civilization which surrounds 
them, or the real meaning of the wonderful 
imagery in which the Arab takes delight. It 
is on all hands admitted that one must be in 
some degree an oriental scholar before he 
can appreciate much of the sacred Scriptures. 
A leading homiletical review has therefore 
opened a department in its pages headed, 
'^ Light from the Orient on Bible Texts." 

We do not wonder that Keshub Chender 
Sen, a learned Hindu, wrote, ^^ Was not Jesus 
Christ an Asiatic ? I rejoice, yea, I am proud 
that I am an Asiatic. He and his disciples 
were Asiatics and all the agencies primarily 
employed for the propagation of the Gospel. 
In fact, Christianity was founded and developed 
by Asiatics in Asia. When I reflect on this 
my love for Jesus becomes a hundred-fold 
intensified. I feel him nearer my heart and 
deeper in my national sympathies. Shall 
I not rather say he is more congenial and akin 
to my oriental nature, more agreeable to my 



Christianity an Oriental Religion. 37 

oriental habits of thought and feeling? And 
is it not true that an Asiatic can read the 
imagery and allegories of the Gospel and 
its description of scenery, of customs and 
manners, with greater interest and a fuller 
perception of the force and beauty, than 
Europeans? " 

Much of the Old Testament is of little 
value to us — the minor prophets, for instance — 
because so essentially oriental in thought 
and expression. There is so little orderliness 
of thought, so little logical arrangement, so 
great a preponderance of feeling and imagina- 
tion, that we either fail to get any meaning 
or see only a glittering and illusory dream. AH 
this is different to an oriental. 

The waste-places of the Bible he may be 
expected to understand, and perhaps inter- 
pret. Renan, in his Life of Jesus, says, 
** Birth and education in the West unfit one 
to understand oriental religions.'* It certainly 
is true that during the last thousand years, 
in which the Bible has been shut out from the 
East, little advance has been made in under- 
standing or interpreting its truth. It has 
been applied in practical forms in the West 



38 Christian Missions. 

as it never could be there. Vast systems of 
theology have been elaborated purporting to 
rest on Scripture, but really based on phi- 
losophy. In interpretation of the Scriptures 
they remain about where the early church 
fathers left off. We still go back to those 
early teachers for our best conceptions of the 
real spirit of Christianity. What may we not 
expect from that same quarter when those 
who now pay attention to the Koran or Veda 
shall turn their attention again to the Bible? 

Chrysostom, after reading the life of Sakya- 
Muni, the founder of Buddhism, and noting 
his deep, thoughtful, and even mystic spirit, 
wrote, " Si fuisset Christianus apud Deum 
maximus factus." He saw that there was soil 
from which Christianity could produce its 
choicest fruit. We cannot but believe that 
not only Sakya-Muni, but thousands of the Ori- 
entals, by their peculiar mental characteristics, 
training, and associations, are better fitted to 
grasp the deep, subtle, and highly imaginative 
poems of Ezekiel and Job, and the profound 
discusssion of the Logos of St. John, than the 
man of western education, no matter how 
complete his mental equipment. Bishop 



Christianity an Oriental Religion. 39 

Thompson said of the Hindus, ^^ They have 
characteristics which, if sanctified, would en- 
able them to enjoy the plerophory of grace. 
Europe is too proud, America too worldly, 
and both too materialistic. India, brought to 
Jesus, may lie, like John, in the Master's 
bosom." 

For the most perfect types of Christian 
living we also look to the East. The world 
will perhaps never have better examples of 
practical Christianity than that which Pliny 
described in his letter to Trajan, or that which 
forced from a pagan emperor the confession, 
*^ See how those Christians live — how they 
love one another! " 

Religion, in all its forms, seems to be 
more at home in the East than in the West, 
and the man of the East more reverent and 
devout than his western brother. The infidels 
of the race are most of them on this side of 
the globe. All the great religions of the 
world had their origin in the Orient. The 
West has never originated any thing in that 
direction save a few religionettes. 

The fate of empire, and especially the tri- 
umph of Moslem arms, drove Christianity out 



40 Christian Missions. 

of the East, where, for several centuries, its 
triumphs were marvels. As we bring it back 
to its ancient home there is strong probability 
not only that it will live, but that it will 
attain in vigor and beauty to proportions it 
never knew here. 

May it not be that out of the East are yet to 
come sages and heralds of Christian truth 
who shall pay back with interest the debt 
they are now incurring? Having in mind the 
expansion of other religions in the East, and the 
phenomenal success of Christianity there for 
several centuries, we fully expect the Gospel 
to bring forth again its richest harvests back 
somewhere about the old hive of the nations 
and the cradle of all religions. We tender our 
thanks to science for supplying a principle 
that quickens our faith in the evangelization 
of eastern nations and shows that even the 
doubts of the scientist himself at this point 
are unscientific. 



Ethnic Religions. 41 



IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 

Heu pietas ! heu prisca fides ! 

Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, 
Taoism, Shintoism, and Confucianism are no 
doubt the principal false faiths with which 
Christianity has to contend. Doctrinally they 
are far apart, yet they have many character- 
istics in common ; so much .so as to justify 
their treatment as a unit. Of course, state- 
ments made concerning ethnic religions as a 
whole will be more true of one than of another, 
and may be altogether wrong sufficiently often 
to emphasize the rule, but not so frequently 
as to disprove the wisdom of treating them as 
a whole. 

The first, and perhaps the most prominent, 
of these characteristics is that they offer to 
their followers salvation by works alone. It is 
enough at this point to offer the testimony of 
Max Miiller, the one man of all others quali- 
fied to speak on this theme : 



42 Christian Missions. 

*' I may claim that in the discharge of my 
duties for forty years (as professor of Sanskrit 
in the University of Oxford) I have devoted 
as much time as any man hving to the 
study of the sacred books of the East. And 
I venture to state what I have found to 
be the one key-note — the one diapason, so to 
speak — of all these so-called sacred books, 
whether it be the Veda of the Brahmans, 
the Puranas of Siva and Vishnu, the Koran 
of the Mohammedans, the Zendavesta of the 
Buddhists: the one diapason, the one refrain 
that you will find through all, is salvation 
by works. They all say that salvation must 
be purchased, bought with a price ; and that 
the sole purchase-money must be our own 
works and deservings. Our own Holy Bible, 
our sacred book of the East, is from beginning 
end a protest against this doctrine. Good 
w^orks are, indeed, enjoined upon us in that sa- 
cred book of the East far more strongly than 
in any other sacred book of the East ; but they 
are only the outcome of a grateful heart — they 
are only a thank-offering, the fruits of our faith. 
They are never the ransom-money of the true 
disicples of Christ. Let us not shut our eyes 



Ethnic Religions. 43 

to what IS excellent and true and of good report 
in these sacred books, but let us teach Hindus, 
Buddhists, Mohammedans that there is only 
one sacred book of the East that can be their 
mainstay in that awful hour when they pass 
all alone into the unseen world. It is the sa- 
cred book which contains the faithful saying, 
worthy to be received by all men, women, and 
children, and not merely by us Christians — 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
us sinners." 

They are ail alike religions of fear. Love is 
the ruling principle of Christianity, prompting 
to labor, gifts, and sacrifices ; so that he w^ho is 
not in all things inspired by love is by so much 
not a Christian. Fear is the active spirit of 
paganism. It drives its votaries on to wor- 
ship ; it impels to deeds and sacrifices, to 
penances, to self-imposed stripes and inflic- 
tions. The gods of heathenism are so repre- 
sented as to create fear on the part of the 
worshipers. 

"' It is true there are millions of children, 
women, and men in India who fall down be- 
fore the stone image of Vishnu, wuth his four 
arms, riding on a creature half bird, half man, 



44 Christian Missions. 

or sleeping on a serpent ; who worship Siva, a 
monster with three eyes, riding naked on a 
bull with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. 
There are human beings who still believe in a 
god of war, Kartikeya, with six faces, riding 
on a peacock and holding a bow and arrow in 
his hands, and who invoke a god of success, 
Ganessa, with four hands and an elephant's 
head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true, in the 
broad daylight of the nineteenth century the 
figure of the goddess Kali is carried through 
the streets of her own city, Calcutta, her wild 
disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a 
necklace of human heads, her tongue protrud- 
ing from her mouth, her girdle stained with 
blood." 

The same might be written of the gods of 
China, which are so represented as to appeal to 
the fears of the people. The museums of 
natural history which contain the images of 
the gods worshiped by the savage tribes of 
the East Indies, the Sandwich Islands, some 
African tribes, and the original inhabitants of 
Mexico and British Columbia, furnish abun- 
dant proof that those grim monsters ruled by 
fear. 



Ethnic Religions. 45 

Gibbon says concerning the religions and 
gods of our ancestors : '^ The ancient Druids, 
who were priests of our ancestors, had few rep- 
resentations of their deities; but their temples 
were in dark and ancient groves, where the se- 
cret gloom of the forest impressed the mind 
w^ith a still deeper sense of religious horror, and 
the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, 
knew how to use every artifice to deepen 
these impressions." 

Not a single one of the religions mention- 
ed can be relieved from the charge of ap- 
pealing exclusively to the fears and not to the 
love of the worshiper. Hence they speak of 
the heathen as being ever busy with new sac- 
rifices, new propitiatory and votive offerings 
to the gods, always led by fear. Out of their 
fears and ignorance combined have arisen 
some of the gloomy doctrines of their creeds, 
such as the doctrine of transmigration, with 
its ascending series of animated bodies, innu- 
merable births and deaths terminating, after 
slow cycle of ages innumerable, in absorption 
in the deity. 

Dr. Wentworth says: '^The writer has a 
tract which pictures the Buddhist and Taoist 



46 Christian Missions. 

hells, in which the lost are tossed by devils 
with pitchforks into the craters of burning 
volcanoes ; bound by devils to hollow pillars 
of brass while fire is kindled inside ; thrown 
naked upon floors of ice or precipitated on 
beds of spikes ; mutilated in all conceivable 
ways, sawn asunder, thrown to wild beasts, 
subject to all styles of degrading transmigra- 
tion — into animals, birds, insects, and vermin ; 
pitched into pools of blood, condemned to 
cross bridges so narrow that they are sure to 
fall off, to become prey to serpents and scor- 
pions, with many other styles of torment 
too tedious to relate and too barbarous to 
mention." 

That utterances which have some faint re- 
semblance to this have been made in the name 
of Christianity is not denied ; but what of 
systems which offer only a gospel of fear 
to their terror-stricken followers? Suppose 
Christianity taught only, and with horrrible 
emphasis and particularity, the doctrine of 
hell-fire, it would then offer as cheerful a 
gospel to its followers as is now proclaimed 
to millions of the race under these pagan 
systems. 



Ethnic Religioxs. 47 

Tltese religions are only to a slight degree 
etliicaL Though sometimes civil, and adapted 
to purposes of state, sometimes military, and 
used to incite a warlike spirit, generally ela- 
borately ceremonial, they have, strange to say, 
little relation to moral conduct. A devoted 
worshiper in many of these systems may lie; 
he may be guilty of fraud and adultery; 
but that need not disturb his piety, nor will it 
disturb him in these indulgences. The expla- 
nation made by the apologist, that, ''the 
ethical element in all religions is late in being 
born," will hardly do here, where it never 
seems to have been born at all. 

We must not infer that the heathen are all 
immoral, untrue, or impure. Many influences 
help to make them otherwise, but religion 
can hardly be counted among these forces. 
Neither are their religious teachings destitute 
of commandments and prohibitions ; but they 
are artificial and ceremonial. 

The writer of an article on Buddhism, in the 
midst of a review of the strange tenets of 
that system, breaks out with the exclamation : 
**\Vhat a mass of moralities, labeled and 
marked ! What singular ideas of the value of 



48 Christian Missions. 

merit and demerit ! The one — even so simple 
a matter as a good wish — affecting all a man's 
future life in his various transmigrations ! An 
evil act or thought of demerit condemning to 
hells without number/' 

The morality aimed at in every case is arti- 
ficial and man-made. According to the teach- 
ings of more than one of these religions hate 
and contemplated murder might pass without 
notice, while to eat without a ceremonial 
washing of hands, or to pray with a spot of ink 
on the finger-nail, would involve guilt. Nor 
need this surprise us when we read that ad- 
herents of a far better system were devouring 
widows' houses and for a pretense making 
long prayers, plotting to kill the Son of man 
and condemning any man who would eat an 
egg that had been laid on the Sabbath. In- 
deed, some have understood a sect of Chris- 
tians to teach that while it would be wrong to 
steal a sheep it would involve far greater guilt 
to eat of it on Friday. 

Ram Chandra Bose says of Mohammedan- 
ism : ^' The only things, almost, about which 
they are very particular are the laws in the 
Koran about prohibited food and certain 



Ethnic Religions. 49 

external observances; and consequently lip 
profession and lip worship, accompanied 
with abstinence from certain kinds of food 
and the wearing of some kinds of badges, 
pass for piety and godliness, even when the 
character of the parties who can only boast 
of such externality is depraved to the very 
core." 

Concerning Shintoism, the ancient relig- 
ion of Japan, Dr. oMaclay writes: ''We may 
perhaps as well state at the outset that an 
examiination of the Shinto literature disclos- 
es the fact that Shintoism has no moral code, 
enunciates no clearly drawn distinctions 
between right and wrong, presents no au- 
thoritative statement or illustration of the 
principles of morality, and does not, in fact, 
enter seriously upon the discussion of any 
ethical subject." 

Where some attempts have been made to in- 
struct in ethics, either from lack of agreement 
as to what was right or the absence of proper 
motives to enforce the teaching, failure has 
ensued. In some cases laxity of morals can 
be traced directly to their peculiar teachings ; 
as, for instance, the doctrine of Karma, or 



50 Christian Missions. 

fate, which underlies more or less all these 
systems. 

Of this Rev. T. J. Scott says: '*This doc- 
trine of fate furnishes a sad example of the 
wide-spread blighting influences a vicious idea 
or doctrine can work when generally received. 
The idea of fate has repressed and blighted 
and vitiated human life as the breath of a vast 
and dreadful pestilence. Every bud and open- 
ing flower of virtue seems blasted by it ; every 
growth of vice and crime seems fostered by it. 
It crushes human progress in good, but forms 
a favorable atmosphere for the development of 
wickedness. Thieves, robbers, murderers, and 
monsters of debauchery complacently offer as 
an apology for their stealing, robbing, murder- 
ing, and debauchery, * Kismet ' (fate).'' 

Paganism as a whole has no morals. Pagan 
peoples have, but their religion ordinarily takes 
a path which is quite apart from the domain 
of ethics. This is the reason why under the 
very shadow of these religious systems polyg- 
amy can flourish, infanticide and falsehood 
not only be practiced but justified, self-murder 
commended, the widow be immolated with 
the body of her dead husband, children be 



Ethnic Religions. 51 

thrown in the Ganges or burned before Baal, 
slavery of the worst forms, and the degradation 
of women, justified. What can a religion hope 
to do with such morals, or rather with such 
immorals, as these ? The moral condition of 
humanity anywhere is deplorable enough to 
suggest a comparison to the man of Jericho 
who had fallen among thieves and was left 
wounded and half dead ; but it is vain to look 
to any existing form of paganism for help. 
They may be depended upon to pass by on 
the other side. 

These religions are destitute of all misssion- 
ary spirit. Granting to them all that they 
claim in the way of excellence, yet the world 
is no better off on that account. It is not in- 
vited to share in this good, and in some cases 
is positively debarred from doing so. Max 
Miiller, in making a classification of mission- 
ary and non-missionary religions, puts Moham- 
medanism and Buddhism along with Chris- 
tianity in the former class. What is no doubt 
implied is that these two systems are not in 
their nature opposed to missionary effort. 
They are rather in favor of it. In the past 
they have each known times of great expan- 



52 Christian Missions. 

sion. At present effort at expansion has prac- 
tically ceased. Mohammedanism may make 
feeble sallies into the heart of Africa and 
Buddhism in Central Asia, but these efforts 
are increasingly feeble, and must at no distant 
day cease. These two religions have practi- 
cally passed from the class of missionary to 
that of non-missionary religions, leaving Chris- 
tianity to stand alone. 

As to the other systems, they are of two 
classes. A part is opposed to all missionary 
effort on principle. With them religion be- 
longs to the nation, and is no more to be 
shared with the world than any other good 
they happen to possess. Such has always 
been the spirit of the Brahman, the Parsee, 
and the Jew. As to a still larger class, they 
are eclectic — that is, they hold the truth as so 
indifferent a thing, so carelessly, that it is no 
matter what one believes. 

An acute scholar, and long resident in China, 
writes : ^' There are three religions in China : 
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism ; and it 
is often supposed that the nation is divided 
between these three, and that there are so 
many Buddhists, so many Confucianists, and 



Ethnic Religions. 53 

so many Taoists. No mistake could be 
greater. Though mutually confllctive and 
repugnant these three systems live together 
in perfect harmony in China. The people be- 
lieve in them all and they belong to them all. 
Such is the latitudinarianism of the Chinese 
that they would neither see nor feel any 
thing incongruous in being members of every 
Church and subscribers to every creed on 
earth.'' 

Dr. Wentworth adds : ^^ In conversation 
with Buddhist priests we have often had them 
tell us, * We have read your books. Jesus w^as 
a good man, just like Buddha ; our religion is 
just like yours.' "• 

The old Greek and Roman mythologies 
took the same course. Gibbon says: ^^ While 
they acknowledged the general advantages of 
religion they were convinced that the various 
modes of worship contributed alike to the 
same salutary purposes, and that in every 
country the form of superstition which had 
received the sanction of time and experience 
w^as the best adapted to the climate and to 
the inhabitants. Rome gradually became the 
common temple of her subjects, and the free- 



54 Christian Missions. 

dom of the city was bestowed on all the gods 
of mankind." 

Great praise has been bestowed on these 
religions because of their liberality in tolerat- 
ing other religions; but it was because they 
held the truth to be so unimportant that they 
did not care what men believed, and certainly 
would not bestir themselves to give them -a 
better faith. 

The systems of paganism that are now ex- 
tant all profess to have the truth, and all differ 
as to why they will not put forth effort to give it 
to the world ; some because they are opposed 
to doing so on principle ; some because they 
are simply indifferent ; but all agree that the 
w^orld must look elsewhere for help. This is a 
significant confession. 

Tliey do not furnish a sufficient basis of gen- 
eral integrity and public confidence for the car- 
rying out of extended schemes^ benevolent or 
financial^ or for the administration of justice. 
It is a well-known fact that commerce is in the 
hands of Christian nations. This is not be- 
cause for the time being Christian peoples 
own the ships and happen to monopolize the 
trade of the world, but because heathen peo- 



Ethnic Religioxs. 55 

pies are handicapped and entirely unfitted to 
enter into competition with Christian nations. 
Organization and co-operation are the watch- 
words of this business age. Indeed, enter- 
prises of magnitude can only be carried on in 
this way. This is only possible where there 
is a good degree of integrity and truthfulness 
and business honor. Any great business 
scheme must collapse the moment it becomes 
known that dishonesty is the rule among em- 
ployees. Heathen religions do not furnish the 
conditions on which comm.ercial prosperity 
may be based. Xo more accurate thermometer 
of general integrity and public confidence can 
be found than the rate of interest on money. 
Where investments are certain interest is low ; 
where uncertain it must be made up by an in- 
creased rate. The rate of interest in all 
heathen cities is exorbitant. 

The following is not more true of the country 
of which it speaks than of many others : 
'* Additional evidence concerning usury in 
Hindustan has been laid before the council. 
A ryot borrowed 10 rupees ten years ago: he 
has paid no and still owes the lender 220. 
Thirteen years ago a widow borrowed 150 



56 Christian Missions. 

rupees (say $75); the lender has taken all the 
products of her forty-acre farm ever since for 
interest alone. A ryot borrowed 17 rupees in 
1858; he has paid 567 on account, and still 
owes 375/' 

Falsehood and deception, where generally 
practiced, make business, except on a small 
scale, impossible. 

A writer already referred to has found it 
necessary, in order to support his view of 
heathen religions, to clear the Hindus from the 
charge of being persistent and outrageous liars. 
He goes back for proof to Ktesias, the famous 
Greek physician, who lived B. C. 400 and to 
Megasthenes, the embassador of Seleucus Nica- 
tor ; brings up the testimony of the king of Siam, 
which is now sixteen hundred years old, and of 
the Mohammedan conquerors, which, while it 
might have been in point five hundred years 
ago, is now rather stale.^ 

It would be interesting to know how the 
report became so widely believed that a Hindu 
trader was *^ an ant's nest of lies;" and it is 
still more significant that those who hold to 
that opinion are those who have dwelt longest 

* Mllller, India; What can it Teach Us ? 



Ethnic Religions. 57 

among them and have known them most inti- 
mately. One who has spent most of his Hfe 
abroad says concerning another people : ^^ As 
a people the Chinese are sadly destitute of 
truthfulness and honesty. I have never known 
a heathen in whose word I could put the 
slightest confidence. A Chinaman is never so 
much in his element as when telling a barefaced 
falsehood. A lie with him is just what a smart 
repartee is with us, and any deception he can 
practice is regarded as legitimate cleverness. 
A Chinaman can be thoroughly honest from 
policy, but he is seldom, if ever, found honest 
from principle. The officials are known by the 
court and the people to embezzle their hundreds 
and thousands and tens of thousands, and yet 
they are not regarded as disreputable by any. 
Bribery, corruption, and extortion fill the land.'* 
In proof of this we offer the treaties made 
between the several Christian nations and 
heathen powers ; as, for instance, that between 
the United States and China, which stipulates 
that, while subjects of that country dwelling 
among us and becoming amenable to our laws 
shall be tried here by a jury of our people, our 
countrymen breaking their laws shall also be 



58 Christian Missions. 

tried by our courts and judges. This stipula- 
tion is made because of the known lack of truth, 
impartiality, and justice in their courts. On 
account of this want of integrity the customs 
service in several heathen countries is in the 
hands, not of natives, but of foreigners. This 
has been brought about, in spite of the prejudice 
against them, simply because the revenue pass- 
ing through foreign hands was found to be so 
much larger than when managed by native 
officials. 

Notwithstanding this want of confidence one 
in another in business affairs, shrewd and enter- 
prising Chinese merchants thought to introduce 
among their own people the business methods 
which they saw to be so successful in other 
lands, especially that of forming large corpora- 
tions. The result is told in a Shanghai letter 
to the London Times : "' The general break- 
down of joint-stock enterprises created and 
managed by Chinese probably results from 
more than mere inexperience. It brings out 
clearly a serious defect in the Chinese character 
which will prevent their ever accomplishing 
any thing really great in the field of commerce 
or finance — the incapacity to work honestly for 



Ethnic Religions. 59 

others. It is the same defect which prevents 
their civil, miHtary, or naval administrations 
from attaining to any position of importance. 
Peculation rules, from the emperor to the coolie, 
and in all their undertakings individualism so 
strongly asserts itself that the effectual co- 
ordination of forces required to bring any 
enterprise to a successful issue is not attainable. 
It will no doubt be a great disappointment to 
the enlightened among them to discover that 
this taint on the character of the people is 
indelible, and that, much as they wish to get 
rid of the presence of foreigners, it is neverthe- 
less to foreigners they must apply to organize 
the resources of their country, whether by 
means of railways, steam-boats, mines, or any 
other form of combined effort whose success 
depends on the certainty that every man will 
do his duty." 

This condition of things comes out in even 
more painful forms sometimes. Paganism is 
confined to the more densely populated coun- 
tries of the East, where the conditions of life 
are hard, and where locusts, floods, drought, or 
pestilence reduce thousands to the verge of 
starvation. The result has been well described 



6o Christian Missions. 

by Medhurst : *^ The supreme government and 
local authorities at such times profess great 
concern for the sufferings of the people, and 
measures are set on foot at times on an exten- 
sive scale to organize schemes for relief; but 
inefficiency and corruption nearly always inter- 
fere to defeat the most beneficent intentions, 
and little or nothing is eventually effected 
beyond the bestowal by imperial favor of a new 
tablet upon a river god or the offering of a 
special sacrifice to propitiate some deity sup- 
posed to be offended.'* 

This condition of things, if not the direct fruit 
of pagan religions, may justly be charged to their 
helplessness and indifference. The people are 
utterly unprepared for the struggles and com- 
petitions which the age is sure to demand of 
them. They must for the present content 
themselves to see the richest prizes in the way 
of the trade of even their own land pass into 
tke hands of others, and they themselves 
become hewers of wood and drawers of water 
till they can replace their pagan morals with 
Christian sentiments and practices. 

These religions make on their followers large 
demands of time and money and give them back 



Ethnic Religions. 6i 

practically nothing Paganism is costly. This 
is in part because, being destitute of any real 
life and power, it endeavors to make up for it 
in showy ceremonials. Attention is diverted 
from the fact that Diana herself is helpless by 
attracting attention to the beauty of her shrine 
and the pomp of her worship. Beautiful groves 
and imposing temples cover inner poverty of 
spirit just as numerous living priests are sup- 
posed to turn attention from the fact that the 
idols are lifeless. This has been equally true 
of Christianity, which has put on a profusion 
of leafy ceremonials in the measure that it has 
been w^anting in fruit. As a rule the ceremonial 
in religion is the most costly part of it. It de- 
mands beautiful temples and shrines, costly 
garments and sacrifices, vast numbers of priests 
and attendants. These demands extend to the 
individual who is burdened with the cost of 
numerous ceremonies for the expulsion of sick- 
ness from the home, of blight from his fields, 
or of guilt from his conscience. 

A foreign resident in any pagan land is sur- 
prised at the number of religious ceremonials, 
the oft recurrence of saints' days, the frequency 
of religious processions, and the continual 



62 Christian Missions. 

appeals for aid to some branch of religion. 
The reason for the distinction so often made in 
pagan lands between a religious man and a 
secular man is founded on the fact that, for one 
to be quite religious, he must give his whole 
time to it — and then fail to keep up with the 
demand for prayers and superstitious practices 
which his religion imposes. 

Christianity, with all the benevolent schemes 
which attach to it, costs but a trifle compared 
with the financial burdens which paganism im- 
poses on its followers. In the simply empty 
and absurd rite of propitiating evil spirits, to 
say nothing of the worship of the gods, China 
pays the sum of one hundred million dollars 
annually. The sacred white elephants of Siam 
are covered with jeweled garments, sleep on 
beds of richest silk, eat the choicest viands out 
of golden dishes, and have their smallest wish 
ministered to by a retinue of attendants. All 
this the people lavishly supply ; and this is one 
of the smallest of the burdens which their 
religion lays on them. 

Attention has often been called to the cost 
to India of the system of Brahmanism. The 
support of a vast army of priests and religious 



Ethnic Religions. 6^ 

mendicants, the erection of shrines and temples, 
the penances and pilgrimages imposed on the 
worshipers, suggest an enormous total. Hence 
it was that the Mohammedan conquerors of 
India found the expenses of their expedition 
paid out of the spoils of the temples, which had 
been gathered from a people noted for their 
poverty. But this would not be so bad if any 
adequate return was made to the people for 
the vast outlay. 

Where will we look for proof that these 
religions offer any real comfort in sorrow, in- 
spire any hopes touching the hereafter, or 
answer any real longings of the soul ? Polythe- 
ism, wherever accepted, precludes the possibility 
of rest of soul. Where the gods are many some 
are likely to be propitious and others imagined 
to be angry, and so the worshiper is kept in 
doubt and fear. Any misfortune he traces to 
this source, and finds in it new reason for 
anxiety. It is equally certain that many of the 
doctrines of pagan religions can yield only a 
harvest of foreboding. That such is actually 
the case is proven by abundant testimony in 
which the confession of the heathen themselves 
is prominent. No stronger proof could be 



64 Christian Missions. 

adduced in favor of this view than the marked 
pessimism that underlies all Eastern religions. 

In Christian countries the opposite or op- 
timist view of life prevails. This makes it 
impossible for one reared under Christian teach- 
ing to believe that the Buddhist ever does 
mean annihilation when he speaks of his longed- 
for Nirvana. That he does mean so, and how 
he can bring himself to desire it, the following 
extract, written by Coomara Swamiy, a Hindu, 
may suggest. He writes from the stand-point 
of the Buddhist : 

'' Why complain of future non-existence 
when, according to what I am taught, I know 
that till now such has always been my lot? 
Nihilism was the great Sahara and existence 
but the little oasis, and not a pleasant oasis 
either. To revert to my native condition can- 
not certainly be a grievance. Indeed, how can 
it be so, if one will but dispassionately study 
the wretchedness of existence? But for life 
there would be no sin, no pain, no punishment. 
True, there is that something which is called 
enjoyment in the world. But to the thinking 
miind this is merely a will-o'-the-w^isp and a 
delusion. If there can be no pleasure without 



Ethnic Religions. 65 

some pain being associated with it, why have 
even the former? " 

Such reasoning — and it is precisely such with 
which Buddhist books are filled — could only 
proceed from those who, unfed and unsatisfied, 
have turned to annihilation as the best that 
oflfered. Another fact which looks in the same 
direction, and which the traveler in pagan lands 
is certain to notice, is the lack of any trace of 
joy in worship. Paganism is almost absolutely 
songless. Mohammedanism has a chant, but 
there is no trace of joy in the minor dirge. Six 
hundred million Buddhists are songless, as are 
the Brahmans, Confucianists and Shintos. 
The cheerless systems under which they dwell 
leave them no heart or theme for song. On 
the whole, the words of Isaiah were never more 
pertinent than when the question is asked mod- 
ern pagan peoples, ^' Wherefore do ye spend 
your money for that which is not bread, and 
your labor for that which satisfieth not ? '* 

These religions have fallen far below the 
standard which they themselves set up in the 
beginning. Aiming to arrest corruption they 
are themselves conspicuous examples of decay. 
The searcher for proof that man unaided attains 



66 Christian Missions. 

at length to the true, the good, and the beauti- 
ful will find cold comfort in the study of these 
religions. In each case there is progress down- 
Avard. The authors of the various treatises on 
ethnic religions are appreciative, and some- 
times enthusiastic, as they speak of the origin 
and early history of the several religions. 
While they confine themselves to an analysis 
of the ancient books they retain a respectful 
tone. When they turn to describe religion as 
it now exists in the various pagan lands we 
detect a growing contempt which continues to 
the end of their chapter. 

The fact has often been pointed out that 
Brahmanism was purest when youngest. The 
most ancient Vedic poems contain the loftiest 
conceptions of God, the more modern Puranas 
are polytheistic and sensual, and later develop- 
ments indicate that progress is still going on in 
the same downward course. 

Buddhism in its fountain-head is at least a 
beautiful poem. Had it no subsequent history 
we must ever look upon it to admire and be 
instructed. As we trace the windings of this 
stream through the muddy fields of supersti- 
tion and growing depravity, at every step of 



Ethnic Religions. 6^ 

which it gathers pollution till it forms the 
Dead Sea of modern Lamaism, our admiration 
is swallowed up of loathing. 

If we are inclined to admire ]\Iohammedan- 
ism, and wish to continue to do so, we must 
confine ourselves lo its early development. 
The farther awav from its source we g-o the 
less of truth and beauty remains. Ram Chan- 
dra Bose writes of Mohammedanism what is 
almost equally true if the name of any other 
pagan religion is substituted : '^ That the 
political power has been on the wane for cent- 
uries, that their religious influence has been 
declining every-whei:e, that their morals have 
been debauched, and that they have deterio- 
rated in physique, these are facts too well known 
to be pointed out, facts admitted by [Moham- 
medans themselves." 

\\^e are therefore driven to the conclusion 
that for all the purposes for which religion is 
supposed to exist — for rest of soul, for com- 
fort in adversity, for help to regulate the un- 
ruly passions of our nature, for confidence in 
the hour of death — the best forms of heathen 
religion as they now stand are lifeless and im- 
potent. 



68 Christian Missions. 



V. 

THE SOLIDARITY OF HUMANITY. 

Nihil humanum mihi alienum. 

We have no inclination to join in the struggle 
which Trench intimates would be made against 
the introduction of the new PVench word soli- 
darity, because its meaning, as given by him, 
*'a community of gain or loss — a being, so to 
speak, all in the same bottom,'' shows that it 
supplies a real want in our vocabulary. The 
Avord not only expresses the relation of the 
several members of the French Commune to 
one another, but a growing thought with refer- 
ence to the relation of the several nations of 
the earth. They too, though without mutual 
pledges to that effect, are in the same bottom, 
to sink or swim together. Humanity is a unit 
and all the nations of one blood. No nation 
liveth to itself, no people goeth to honor or 
shame alone. All real progress must be of the 
entire race. Local or sectional advancement is 
of value as it affects the whole. The truth of 



The Solidarity of Humanity. 69 

this statement is not lessened by the fact that 
it is not the theory of any accepted science of 
government or the working basis of any nation, 
even as the sun was still the center of the 
solar system long before Copernicus announced 
it to the world. The usual practice of nations 
seems to have been '^the good old rule,'' 

*' The simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

Simple as this rule was it was a policy that 
built up one nation on the ruin of others and 
left no permanent benefit to any, like a great 
wave of the sea, which shows the highest crest, 
now here, now there, without any onward 
motion to the waters. Rome grew out of the 
ruin of Carthage and Athens ; Athens out of 
the wreck of Persia ; Persia at the expense of 
Babylon; and Babylon out of the plunder of 
Jerusalem. Temporary elevation of one nation 
was not then, and is not now, necessarily the 
advancement of the race. Napoleon, that great 
highway robber of the nations, sought to 
enrich France at the expense of all Europe. 
He succeeded for a time, but in the measure 
that France was strengthened and enriched 



70 Christian Missions. 

Europe was impoverished and helpless. He 
carried away to Paris the finest specimens of 
art of most of the capitals of Europe, but 
their temporary location in Paris added noth- 
ing to the art treasures of the world. It is 
largely due to Napoleon that Europe is a vast 
military camp where rival powers watch each 
other and an unfortunate nation is in the posi- 
tion of a disabled wolf in a hungry pack ! But 
if Russia gain territory or power at the expense 
of Austria or Germany, at the humiliation of 
England, where is the gain to the race? Such 
a policy is not only selfish but short-sighted, 
and in the end suicidal. There is no real gain 
which is at the expense of another, even as 
there is no true commerce save where ex- 
change is of mutual benefit. The nations must 
go forward together, if at all. The laggards 
must be aided and the weak defended on 
ordinary principles of self-interest. ^^ What 
great reform in our social, political, or educa- 
tional system is most needed and will advance 
us as a people ?*' was recently asked of a score 
of the best minds of America. Andrew Car- 
negie answered, ^* The world does not move 
forward in any one department, but by a 



The Solidarity of Humanity. 71 

gradual movement along the whole line." In 
the march of Israel toward Canaan the tribe 
of Judah, great in numbers and in men of war, 
took the lead : Judah might easily have forged 
ahead and perhaps entered the land at once, 
but the command was for the nation to advance 
as a unit, and to go no faster than the weakest 
tribe. True policy dictated that the strong 
should help, defend, and so hasten the weak, 
and by so much the advance of the entire 
people. 

Suppose Judah had used her superior 
strength to pillage Ephraim, and deplete that 
tribe of her strong men for the burden and 
the march, Judah would have been temporarily 
stronger, but all Israel, and so Judah, would 
have been delayed so much longer in the 
desert. Even so the nations of the earth, 
which are, after all, but tribes of a common 
family, have been delayed in the march toward 
the goal of the human race by the selfish 
policy of each nation ignoring all others but 
its own and acting on the policy, ^^ Our coun- 
try, right or wrong." The wisdom of a broader 
policy in the comity of nations is being em- 
phasized by the logic of events. 



72 Christian Missions. 

Among the most significant are the breaking 
down of the barriers of nations, the end of 
isolation, and the era of migration and travel. 
Railroads are in part responsible for this, of 
which we have in Europe 115,000 miles; in 
Asia, 12,000; in Africa, 4,000; in Australia, 
nearly 7,000. 

On this side we have in the United States 
and Canada 146,000 miles, in Mexico about 
8,000, and in Central and South America to- 
gether a like number. Altogether there is 
enough railroad in operation to girdle the earth 
twelve times, and enough is being built to 
make a new girdle every two years. 

Neptune's horses are equally busy on the 
sea. England alone has 1,600 steam vessels 
engaged in foreign trade, manned by 200,000 
seamen. She has many times that number of 
sailing vessels, and is but one of the nations. 
The result is a yearly migration in all direc- 
tions dwarfing the exodus of Israel or the 
barbarian irruption of the Huns and Tartars. 
In the last thirty years 7,500,000 immigrants 
have made a home in our borders. We send 
abroad for trade or travel a vast number of our 
people, and England, France, Germany, and 



The Solidarity of Humanity. 73 

Russia each duplicate the number. ■ If work- 
men are needed in any corner of the world the 
working-classes flock there from all directions 
as the waters seeking a level. The commerce 
of the West has left a sprinkling of Anglo- 
Saxons in every port of every sea and along 
all the great highways of travel and trade. 
The pinchings of poverty and hunger have re- 
sulted in a deposit of foreign immigrants in all 
western lands, sometimes like a light snow 
after a storm flurry, and sometimes like a 
stratum of mud after a freshet. 

All the great cities are now cosmopolitan, 
and one has but to stop and listen to the babel 
of tongues to be reminded of the Babel where 
they were once confounded. This bringing 
together of the inhabitants of different and dis- 
tant regions, tends to counteract sectarianism, 
mitigate party and sectional prejudices, pro- 
mote unity and homogeneity. Vast sums of 
money are now loaned from land to land. We 
are invited to world conventions for the char- 
ities and humanities, and world's fairs for the 
display of the products and inventions of the 
earth. The nations of the Western hemi- 
sphere are summoned to meet in convention. 



74 Christian Missions. 

There are rumors of one language that is to 
take the place of existing forms of speech, one 
currency for all the world, and one system of 
weights and measures. The centripetal forces of 
common interest and better understanding are 
certainly increasing faster than the centrifugal 
forces of selfishness and lust of power. 
The poet writes of a time when 

** The war-drum throbbed no longer and the battle-flags were 

furled, 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world/' 

The interests of the human race in all quarters 
of the globe are becoming so intertwined that 
there seems no way left for human progress 
but to advance all along the line. It is be- 
ginning to be seriously questioned whether we 
can reach the broadest and wisest national 
policy by simply striking a balance between 
the advantages of tariff and free trade, and 
thus finding out w^hat is best for us. The ques- 
tion will still remain after that whether what 
is not good for the world can in the long run 
be good for any one nation? 

^'An English minister," writes an emi- 
nent living historian, ** must be an English min- 
ister first of all ; but he will never be a great 



The Solidarity of Humanity. 75 

minister if he does not in all his policy recog- 
nize the truth that there are considerations 
of higher account for him, and for England, 
too, than England's immediate interests. No 
man can truly serve his country to the best 
of his power who has not in his mind all 
the time a service still higher than that 
of his country." 

A narrow, selfish policy is becoming year- 
ly more dangerous. There have been times 
when a nation could sit down behind im- 
passable barriers of mountains or beyond dis- 
tant seas and build up a civilization untouched 
by the outside world. In such an age the 
prevalence of the most degrading barbarism 
and the most revolting vices made little differ- 
ence to the rest of the world. It was suffici- 
ently quarantined by distance and isolation. 
This is no longer the case. The leper among 
the nations walks abroad, and the only safe-- 
ty is to cure him of his disease. He may be 
left to solve the problem of recovery alone, but 
he will have revenge by poisoning the atmos- 
phere and spreading the contagion. 

In the great cities of the world not a few 
men of wealth and note, though notoriously 



"j^ Christian Missions. 

not overburdened with piety, are becoming 
munificent patrons of public charity and reform. 
They are learning at length that though they 
may, content in their marble palaces and in cost- 
ly churches on Sunday, let the vice, crime, and 
pauperism of the city severely alone, yet it will 
not let them alone. It can originate strikes, 
burn railroad depots and tear up rails, fill jails 
and alms-houses for the rich to support, fur- 
nish breeding places for the pestilence and 
abundant fuel for the vices of young patricians 
to feed upon. Hence the same worldly policy 
that accumulated the wealth says, Build chap- 
els and libraries ; open midnight missions and 
reform schools. Save us from the masses in 
the only possible way — by making them better- 
The same worldly policy is calling attention 
to seven million freemen. To leave them in 
ignorance with votes in their hands would be 
folly. The education and Christianization of 
the blacks is the only possible safety for the 
whites. Christianity and self-interest are for 
once agreed ; the missionary and the poli- 
tician speak the same things, though for dif- 
ferent reasons. The races of the earth that 
are low down in the scale of intellifience and 



Tke Solidarity of Humanity. ^jj 

morality must be aided for a like reason. The 
contact points between Christian and pagan 
peoples are now million-fold. Sometimes in 
place of virtue being imparted by the touch of 
civilization pollution is received. Wherever 
races of very different grades of civilization 
come in contact, there, for a time at least, vice 
holds high carnival. The darkest spots on the 
face of the earth are not in the center of bar- 
barous nations, but along the borders, where 
drunken sailors, soldiers, reprobate merchants, 
and the scum of Christian lands meet a similar 
class, and each learns the vices of the other 
without forgetting his own. 

The bitter cry of the women of Alaska, the 
open shame of many sea-ports of China, Japan, 
and India, the almost entire depopulation of 
islands of the Pacific on account of the intro- 
duction of the vices of civilization, and the woes 
of many an African village are sufficient evi- 
dence. The influence of paganism on the 
moral condition of the age will be noted by the 
historian of the future as we now note the 
effect on Europe of contact with the Orient 
from the first invasion of the Moors to the last 
crusade. Bishop Foster says of paganism in 



78 Christian Missions. 

general: *^ It hangs as a ponderous weight 
about the neck of the race, sinking it deeper 
and deeper into night and death." The only- 
way to get this weight from the neck of the 
race is to help the nations that have been 
blighted by false creeds to replace their 
baseless superstitions with Christianity. The 
human race is a unit, like a human body, and 
the only safe policy is not to aim at an ab- 
normal development of any given part or 
organ, but at the symmetrical building up of 
the whole system. 

The part that is neglected will make its pro- 
test felt by ruining the health of the whole 
body. The Old Testament economy was, dis- 
claiming all care for other races, to build up 
and keep pure one people. The failure was 
signal because the races left in darkness sooner 
or later corrupted and enticed from the worship 
of the one God the chosen people. The wiser 
and better policy of the new dispensation is to 
^^ go into all the earth and evangelize all 
nations." This is the work which modern mis- 
sions essay to do. It is not a little encourag- 
ing to find that the human race is being shut 
up to this, as the only way of true and lasting 



The Solidarity of Humanity. 79 

progress, and that to the various branches of 
the human family may be applied the words 
which Franklin addressed to those who had 
just signed their names to the immortal doc- 
ument, ^^ We must hang together or hang 
separately/' 



8o Christian Missions. 



VI. 

WAR AND THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Paretur pax bello. 

The last half of the nineteenth century was 
ushered in amid the boom of cannon, and 
there has scarce been a time since when the 
sound could not somewhere be heard. Russia 
had a short and sharp contest with the allied 
powers, and again with Turkey alone. France 
had a memorable struggle with Germany and 
with China. England has had use for her army 
in the Sepoy rebellion in India, the Opium 
War of China, in Natal, Abyssinia, and Egypt. 
Germany, Italy, Mexico, China, and the United 
States have each had severe internal struggles. 

At least fifteen distinct wars have been 
waged during the last thirty-five years, costing 
an untold amount of treasure and a vast num- 
ber of human lives. It is a matter of profound 
sorrow that, so long after the advent of the 
Prince of Peace, the gates of the temple of 
Janus should, as a rule, be open, men industri- 



Progress of Christianity. 8i 

ous as ever in perfecting the art of killing men, 
and the world still be willing to devote 
*^ twenty-six hundred millions of dollars a year 
to Mars, against perhaps twenty-six millions 
for the Messiah." If there be any compensa- 
tion for this great loss, or any other and brighter 
side to this dark record, we may be pardoned 
for dwelling on it and making the most of it. 

It is w^orthy of notice that these wars have, 
for the most part, been between Christian and 
non-Christian nations. Such were the first and 
second wars between Russia and Turkey, the 
fivefold wars of England in the East, and tfie 
struggles of England and France with Egypt 
and China. In every case the Christian nation 
has not only been victorious, but has been able 
to secure substantial advantages for the cause 
of Christianity, either in the way of securing 
the privilege of extending it without molestar 
tion, the protection of those who embraced it, 
or the hardly less important, though indirect, 
advantage which the prestige of victory among 
a heathen people gives to every thing belong- 
ing to the victor. The cessation of the horrid 
and unbearable oppression of the Christian 
population of Turkey, the complete independ- 



82 Christian Missions. 

ence of Roumania, Servia, and Greece from the 
rule of ^^ the unspeakable Turk;'' India freed 
from despotic rule and put to school to a 
Christian nation ; China open to trade and the 
Gospel, and Egypt and Anam put in the way 
of a Christian civilization — these are some of 
the fruits of recent wars. 

When war has been internal, or between 
Christian countries, the result has been little 
less satisfactory for the cause of truth and just- 
ice. The freedom and consolidation of the 
Italian States, the unification of Germany, the 
preservation of the American Union, and the 
emancipation of the slaves, are unquestionably 
good results. 

The least fruitful of all these wars, the 
Franco-German, by crushing the military con- 
ceit of the nation whose military character and 
history was a constant menace to the peace of 
Europe, secured as substantial benefits as the 
rest. Five sevenths of the surface of the globe 
is now under the direct control of Christian 
nations — ■ a result which was secured very 
largely by war. 

The issue of battle has in nearly every case 
been on the side of truth and progress, and in 



Progress of Christianity. 83 

no case has it acted, to cripple the civilizing 
forces of the world or re-enforce the powers of 
darkness. 

Much as we deprecate war, the world could 
ill afford to give up the results gained by it in 
the last half-century. We make no apology 
for war, nor seek to glorify the warrior. The 
sword has too often been used in the cause of 
selfishness and wrong for that. We fully 
admit 

'* Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals or forts." 

In speaking of the benefits of war we only 
magnify the grace and the overruling provi- 
dence of Him who can make even the wrath 
of man to praise him and the cannon the fore- 
runner of the Gospel and the missionary. The 
assertion that "Christianity, unlike Moham- 
medanism, has never used or profited by the 
force of arms" is untenable. The conversion 
of Europe to nominal Christianity was partly a 
work of the sword. From A. D. 500, means 
effective, but not all of them Christian, were 
used, and a commission to evangelize meant, 



84 Christian Missions. 

in most cases, to conquer. Thus Charlemagne 
introduced Christianity to the Huns. In this 
manner Konrad brought the Gospel to the 
notice of the Prussians. 

Others, as the Suevi and the Goths, accepted 
the religion, as they did the laws, of the power 
that conquered and ruled them. In the proc- 
ess of time that which was simply lip and knee 
service grew into intelligent faith and love. 
So frequently has this been the order that 
John Foster, in his celebrated essays/ says : 
*' Did you ever listen to a discussion of plans 
for the civilization of barbarous nations with- 
out the intervention of conquest? I have — 
with despair." 

The fact that we have no right to do evil 
that good may follow does not prevent the 
Ruler of the universe from over-ruling even the 
wicked passions of men for the glory of his 
kingdom. The terrible persecutions of the first 
three centuries were no doubt made instru- 
mental in the triumph of the Gospel in Rome. 
The greed of the East India Company was 
clearly overruled for the lasting good of India. 
A Christian poet echoes only the same senti- 
ment when she sings : 



Progress of Christianity. 85 

" I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling 

camps ; 
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and 

damps ; 
I read can his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. 
His day is marching on." 

There is this to be said also of many of the 
wars of this century — they were not under- 
taken for selfish and ambitious ends. They 
have been rather the inevitable result of the 
contact of civilization and barbarism, light and 
darkness, which the expansion of the age has 
brought about. The citizens of Christian 
countries are migratory. They go to the ends 
of the earth for knowledge, trade, or the spread 
of the Gospel. Wherever they go they take 
their institutions and the appliances of modern 
civilization, such as the printing-press, loco- 
motive, telegraph, and all the wonders of 
modern mechanism. They believe in liberty, 
justice, equality, and the spread of the truth, 
and these ideas, gained after ages of conflict, 
they will not be likely to give up or cease to 
maintain. 

They, moreover, cannot look upon the op- 
pression of their fellow-Christians with com- 
placency. The people with whom they come 



86 Christian Missions. 

in contact are ignorant and despotic. They 
are, moreover, so conceited as to think that 
they are strong enough to cope with any force. 
This leads them to provocation, which ends in 
war. These conflicts are inevitable, because 
commerce and contact of nation with nation 
are inevitable. Christian nations dare not give 
up their ideas ; heathen peoples will not theirs, 
and no way seems yet to have been devised to 
settle the differences which arise w^ithout an 
appeal to arms, unless civilized nations consent 
to cowardly silence and inactivity in the pres- 
ence of injustice and wrong. 

When the spirit of Christianity shall exert 
its proper influence among all people war will 
cease throughout the world, but till that time 
*' it must needs be that offenses come." Those 
who advocate a policy of non-resistance, and 
whose only cry is peace, should first show us 
that justice and peace are prevalent which war 
will disturb. However we may cry peace, 
trouble and sorrow exist on the earth, and real 
peace is often only to be gained by war. 

If war is cruel, and it be *^ a libel on divine 
Providence to intimate that he has aught to do 
with it," we need to remember that there are 



Progress of Christianity. 87 

some things worse than war. There have been, 
and are, especiahy under the despotisms of the 
East, oppressions and tyrannies of which we 
little dream. There are social wrongs which 
are ages long. There are festering sores which 
only the bayonet can prick. The occupation 
of India by the British lifted the curtain on a 
scene of awful political misrule and spiritual 
darkness vrhich could allow a petty ruler to 
build a tomb at a cost of ten million dollars, 
wrung from the poor, and by the enforced 
labor of twenty thousand workmen, who for 
seventeen years wrought without compensa- 
tion, and could allow a ruler to levy a tax of 
four fifths of all the product of shop or farm on 
a people so blind as to give the other fifth to 
support a system of religion which demanded, 
and received, an annual holocaust of thirty 
thousand widows and many times that number 
of both men and women as victims to Kali. 
The cry from the Christians of Turkey, which 
precipitated at least one war, was not only 
because, as Christians, they were oppressed, 
but because, as subjects, they had no rights 
they could call their own, and were under the 
dominion of petty pashas, ''who were so many 



88 Christian Missions. 

sponges put over the ground in order to suck 
up the wealth of the inhabitants that it might 
be the more readily squeezed into the sultan's 
coffers." 

In the Zulu War many were no doubt slain, 
and the war by many was, therefore, con- 
demned as cruel ; but there was hardly more 
cruelty in the land during the war than when 
in its normal condition of peace. Just before 
the war Cetewayo, on assembling his army and 
finding, as a matter of course, many absent 
on account of sickness, said, ^^ You sick men 
are of no use to the country, and I will save 
the doctors the trouble of attending you," so 
he sent and killed them. The question of war 
being cruel is at least an open one when the 
first condition of the treaty gained by it was 
** indiscriminate shedding of blood shall cease, 
and no Zulu be killed without a trial.'' 

China is ruled by a dynasty which, pretend- 
ing to a paternal care of the people, has the 
parental love of an ostrich, which deserts its 
young, and which may fairly allow the country 
to enter the list of the nations for the prize of 
being the worst governed country on the face 
of the earth. 



Progress of Christianity. 89 

War may be cruel but it is short and deci- 
sive, which is more than can be said of many of 
the evils for which it seems to be the only 
antidote ; and on the score of humanity 
simply we might well pray that the sound of 
the cannon may ere long be heard in some 
regions which now enjoy peace, but which is 
only the peace of despair or death. Do we 
not, therefore, err when we infer that because 
we hear of wars and rumors of wars, therefore 
the Gospel of peace is inoperative, or the hands 
on the dial of the world's progress are moving 
backward ? 



90 Christian Missions. 



VII. 

COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Argumentum ad crumenam. 

Commerce and the Gospel have been inti- 
niately associated ever since the days when fish- 
ermen and tax collectors were the chosen her- 
alds. The seller of purple of Thyatira and the 
tanner of Joppa received the early evangelists 
into their houses ; the corn ships of Alexandria 
carried them over the sea, and the manufacture 
of goat's hair tents furnished a means by which 
they might not be burdensome to any. Since 
that time the centers of trade have been the 
strongholds of the Gospel. Christianity has 
pushed along the track of commerce, partly 
because in its very spirit it is allied to the ac- 
tivities of daily life and must be carried off by 
main force, if at all, to the hermit's cell, and 
partly because trade furnishes the financial 
basis as well as the open door for the carrying 
out of the great commission. 

This debt to commerce the Gospel has richly 



Commerce and Christianity. qi 

repaid by bringing distant tribes into contact 
with civilization, opening up new avenues of 
trade and creating a multitude of artificial 
wants that only commerce can supply. 

Rev. Henry Harden says of central Turkey 
w^hat is equally true of other lands : '' The Ori- 
ental, when left to himself, is entirely satisfied 
with the customs of his ancestors and aspires 
to nothing better. No contact with Western 
civilization has ever roused him from his 
apathy ; but when his heart is warmed into 
life by gospel truth his mind awakens, and he 
w^ants a clock, a book, a glass window, and a 
flour-mill. Almost every steamer that leaves 
New York for the Levant brings sewing- 
machines, watches, carpenters' tools, cabinet 
organs, or other appliances of Christian civil- 
ization in response to the native orders that 
never would have been sent but for the Bible; 
and now as you pick your way along the nar- 
row streets, through the noisy crowd of men, 
camels, donkeys, and dogs, the click of the 
American sewing-machine or the sweet strains 
of the American organ often greet the ear, 
like the voice of an old friend from home.** 
For this reason the missionary cause often 



92 Christian Missions. 

receives aid from men who only saw that 
as fast as pagan tribes were converted there 
arose a demand for soap, clothing, axes, and 
plows. The foreign trade of Great Britain with 
the most distant ports and islands of the 
sea, amounting to upward of four billions of 
dollars annually, was largely created by " the 
foolishness of preaching " on the part of the 
missionary. 

When Christianity was first taken to the 
Sandwich Islands there was no commerce 
there or intercourse with other nations. After 
seventy years of labor the trade between 
the United States and the islands amoun- 
ted to $5,546,000, and the natives were buy- 
ing yearly at the single port of San Fran- 
cisco goods amounting to $500,000 more than 
the entire cost of Sandwich Island missions 
from the beginning. This debt, in favor of the 
Gospel, commerce is now in turn canceling by 
furnishing to the heathen an argument in fa- 
vor of the rejection of their pagan system of 
worship, more convincing than any offered by 
the missionary, or possible from any other 
source. 

To understand the force of this argument 



Commerce and Christianity. 93 

we must remember that greed of gain is not 
peculiar to any land. 

"Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Hard and yellow and bright and cold ; 
Easy to get and hard to hold," 

is a kind of international god whose shrines 
are every-where. The almighty dollar is not 
any more omnipotent here than the franc, the 
rupee, the tael, or the shekel in other countries. 
The half-civilized races of the earth seem to be 
■ more sordid and more grasping than elsewhere. 
Even the worship of their gods is to a large ex- 
tent inspired by a desire to so propitiate them 
by prayers and sacrifices that they in turn may 
grant to their devoted followers success in their 
worldly undertakings. A traveler, who took 
from the celebrated prayer-tree of Hiogo, 
Japan, a number of petititions, which had been 
written out and tied to the branches for the 
gods to examine and grant at their leisure, 
found them to be not petitions for any spiritual 
interest, but in every case prayers for some tem- 
poral good. They worship the gods that they 
may be continued in health, prospered in busi- 
ness, and successful in all their enterprises. 
We can readily see the effect when they come 



94 Christian Missions. 

to understand, as they are beginning to do, 
that no gain has or will accrue to them from 
the worship of the gods, but that those who 
entirely neglect and even ridicule these deities 
are richer and more prosperous than they. It 
cannot much longer escape the notice of the 
most obtuse pagan mind that Christian nations 
are in the ascendency in every thing. The 
commerce, even of their own country, is in 
ships that fly foreign flags. Out of twenty- 
one million tons of foreign shipping, seventeen 
millions belong not only to Christian but to 
Protestant powers. 

Goods made by machinery, and so cheaper 
and better than their hand-made supply, are 
pushing into all their markets and they are 
powerless to resist. Foreign inventions are 
brought to their attention which astonish and 
perplex them. Their learned men are forced 
to admit that Western science is far beyond 
themi. Their medical men are driven to con- 
fess that they know little in comparison with 
the physicians of Christian lands. They find 
themselves poor and other nations rich. As 
they attempt to cope with our armies or 
navies they find themselves beaten, and 



Commerce and Christianity. 95 

must relearn the art of war and provide new 
weapons. 

They are forced to notice that the simple in- 
crease of wealth in England and the United 
States, during the past twenty years, is many 
times more than they have gathered with in- 
finite toil during thousands of years. The 
hundreds of students, the attaches of em- 
bassies, and the occasional traveler from pagan 
lands cannot fail to notice and report that our 
people have better homes, food, clothing, and 
opportunities for happiness than theirs. In- 
deed, the contrast is most striking. The log- 
ical and practical conclusion which the people 
are certain to draw from all this is, that the 
worship of the gods is useless, since in the 
very particulars concerning which they call 
most upon them those who neglect the gods 
entirely are better off. 

The religious revolution in Japan has been 
brought about mainly by the object lesson of 
the ascendency of Christian nations in all things 
else, and why not in religion? Jiji Shimpo 
boldly advocates the adoption of Christianity 
by the Japanese ** on purely economic and po- 
litical grounds, as the best thing for Japan 



96 Christian Missions. 

ethically and socially/' A learned Brahman re- 
cently said to his countrymen, ^^ Where did the 
English-speaking people get all their intelli- 
gence and energy, cleverness and power? It 
is the Bible that gives it to them. And now 
they bring it to us and say, ' This is what 
raises us. Take it and raise yourself.' '^ Mr. 
Chalmers, the apostle of New Guinea, declares 
that he has never met a tribe who desired to have 
teachers so that they might be taught the 
Gospel, and he does not believe there ever has 
been one. All like the teachers at first be- 
cause of the worldly gospel they bring : because 
of the peace between the tribes, because of the 
increased supply of salt and tobacco, of beads 
and tomahawks ; but soon they learn differ- 
ently, and after a time begin to appreciate it 
as God's message of love to man. 

The same argument was most effective in 
turning our Saxon ancestors away from their 
idols. Bede tells us how Coifi, one of the most 
influential men among them, announced his 
conversion to the king: ''None of our peo- 
ple, Eadwine, have worshiped the gods more 
busily than I, yet there are many more favored 
and fortunate. Were these gods good for any 



Commerce and Christianity. 97 

thing they would help their worshipers.'* Then 
leaping on horseback, he hurled his spear into 
the sacred temple at Godmanham and with 
the rest of the Witan embraced the religion 
of the king. 

It is not a question whether appeals to self-in- 
terest are to be commended or conversions that 
commenced in such low motives accepted as 
genuine. We only claim that such arguments 
are patent to the rudest intellect and have to 
the ignorant peculiar power. Merivale says of 
the early progress of Christianity : ^* Among 
the multitudes there was probably after all no 
argument so effective, no testimony to the di- 
vine authority of the Gospel so convincing, as 
that from the temporal success with which 
Christianity was eventually crowned. The 
great inert mass of the thoughtless, the gross- 
minded, and the carnal, upon w^hom no legiti- 
mate argument could make any impression, 
w^ere startled, arrested, and convinced by the 
last overruling argument of success.'* 

This argument is now telling with unusual 
power against pagan gods and superstitions in 
all quarters of the globe. The steamers that 
ascend the Nile^ the Yang-tsze-Kiang, and the 



98 Christian Missions, 

Euphrates, the cars that thunder back and forth 
through the he^rt of India, Japan, along the 
Nile valley, and about the capital of the Chi- 
nese Empire, are all missionaries. Every bale 
or goods, every clock, cabinet organ, sewing- 
machine, plow, carpenters' tool, each separate 
article of each ship load of goods sent abroad, 
has for the follower of false religions a message 
concerning the impotency of his gods. The 
books translated into Eastern languages, espe- 
cially concerning geography, geology, astron- 
omy, chemistry, medicine, and the industrial 
arts, are silent witnesses of the helplessness or 
perfidy of the gods who could allow their de- 
voted followers to be ignorant of these things. 

Every flag of a Christian nation reminds 
them how superior the God of the Christians 
is to their deities, since he has made his wor- 
shipers masters on sea and land. The great 
manufacturing centers of the world are thus 
the head-quarters of the greatest missionary 
movement of the age. The deep-laid plans of 
commerce for the extension of trade are the 
deeper plans of God for the overthrow of 
idolatry. 

The prosperity of Christian nations, while it 



Commerce and Christianity. 99 

amounts to a powerful appeal in favor of 
Christianity, also indicates the wisdom of the 
missionary in keeping his own dress and manner 
of living. The very fact that he is a foreigner, 
and comes, not only in the name of Christian- 
ity, which his hearers do not appreciate at 
once, but of Christian civilization and progress, 
which they do, gives him an immense advan- 
tage, which increases in proportion to the intel- 
ligence of his hearers and which he cannot af- 
ford to throw away. 



loo Christian Missions. 



VIIL 

THE humanitarian VIEW. 

Homo homini ignoto lupus est. 

An English government official of India, in 
explaining his position as chairman of a mis- 
sionary meeting when not a professed Chris- 
tian, said : '^ In order to have a lively interest 
in Christian missions it is not necessary that 
one should be a Christian. It is only necessary 
that he should be a lover of his kind/* Can 
a valid claim be made for Christian missions 
on the ground of philanthropy alone? Is 
there that in the condition of society in non- 
Christian lands to justify an appeal to the 
humanity and pity of the world? ^'Yes/* 
and ** no/' are answers given to these ques- 
tions. The obscurity which seems to exist is 
only because attention is fixed on ethnic re- 
ligions themselves, and their adaptation or fail- 
ure to satisfy the soul wants of their followers, 
rather than on the condition of pagan society. 

On one side, the revolting tenets and gro- 



The Humanitarian View. ioi 

tesque characters ascribed to the gods of pa- 
ganism are accepted as conclusive proof that 
these religions are utterly unsatisfactory. On 
the other hand, it is replied that, when inter- 
rogated, the heathen declare that they are 
quite satisfied ; that they still worship on from 
age to age, resisting every attempt to turn at- 
tention to a better faith, and even bestow sin- 
cere and v/ell-meant pity on the followers of 
other religions. Besides, it is added, ^' who 
has a perfect creed, or adequate conceptions 
of the deity? They may be a little farther off 
than we, but we have all only approximations 
to the truth." 

While men may cavil as to the extent to 
which ethnic religions profit the souls of their 
followers or brighten their hereafter, there can 
be no reasonable doubt that they have failed to 
materially improve their bodily surroundings 
or mitigate the woes of the life that now is. 
** The same stars rise and set upon this globe 
that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along 
the Egyptian Nile ; and the same sorrows rise 
and set in every age. All that sickness can 
do, all that disappointment can effect, all that 
blighted love, disappointed ambition, thwarted 



I02 Christian Missions. 

hope ever did, they do still. Not a tear is 
wrung from eyes now that for the same rea- 
son has not been wept over and over again in 
long succession since the hour that the fated 
pair stepped from Paradise and gave their pos- 
terity to a world of sorrow and suffering.** 

It is the office of religion, not only to peo- 
ple heaven, but to mitigate the sorrows of 
earth and to make lighter the burdens which 
humanity must carry. That Christianity is 
actually doing this work the multiplied chari- 
ties that are engaged in organized effort for 
the relief of all forms of suffering, the hos- 
pitals, orphanages, asylums, refuges, homes, 
fitly called '' God*s hotels,*' that lift their no- 
ble fronts in every city, are abundant proof. 
That charity 

** Meek and lowly, pure and holy, 
Chief among the blessed three," 

IS in the land, witness Chicago, Memphis, 
Jacksonville, Charleston, and Johnstown. In 
all this we find, not difference, but contrast, as 
we cross the border-land of Christianity and 
look in on the society of pagan lands. 

Charity is indeed found in pagan lands, but 
it is arbitrary and whimsical ; endowing a hos- 



The Humanitarian View. 103 

pital, it may be, for cows or monkeys while 
men and women starve and die in the streets. 
It is not surprising to find disease in all its 
forms at work in the dense population of the 
Old World. Such is the case in the best 
Christian communities in our own land. The 
difference is, that here the healing arts of one 
of the noblest professions, the comforts that 
are furnished the sick-room, the kind and sym- 
pathetic attention which Christian society de- 
mands shall be given to even the sick poor 
and the stranger, and the comforts of an in- 
telligent faith in the event of death — these les- 
sen, as far as may be, the pains of sickness and 
extract the sting from death. 

If we would realize how different all this is 
in non-Christian countries we must remember 
that, as a rule, no attention is paid to sanitary 
measures, even in crowded cities. Poverty 
deprives of comforts which are necessary for 
the prevention of, or restoration from, sickness. 
Foolish superstitions impose unnecessary pains 
on the sick and deprive some of the care which 
ordinary humanity would give, as in the case 
of the stranger, the widow, or one who has 
lost caste. Worst of all, a rational science of 



I04 Christian Missions. 

medicine is unknown throughout the East. 
Rude schools of rational practitioners with a 
limited pharmacopoeia of simple herbs may 
sometimes be found, but far more credit is 
given to charms, witchcraft, and whimsical and 
absurd methods, such as sucking and blowing 
on the diseased organ, accompanied with 
chants, or the pretended extraction of splint- 
ers of wood, pebbles, and bits of cloth, accom- 
panied by magical signs. 

This is even true, to a large extent, of that 
part of the East which was the cradle of med- 
ical science, where Avicenna wrote his treatise 
on pathology and materia inedica which is said 
to be the basis of practice in Turkey to-day. 
But if the basis, it is much like the basis of the 
Washington monument — out of sight ! 

An Arab doctor has been known to write 
out a sentence from the Koran, directing the 
sufferer, after steeping the bit of paper in 
water, to drink the draught. A physician of 
the Levant recommended the trachea of a 
wolf hung from the neck of the patient as a 
cure for mumps, and the skin of the flying- 
squirrel held in the hand to make parturition 
easy ! The most common theory of disease 



The Humanitarian View. 105 

is that it is caused by disease demons, hence 
the more frequent resort to the priest than to 
the doctor. This explains the method often 
practiced to quarantine against small-pox and 
cholera by surrounding the house with brush- 
wood, ditches, and vessels of stinking oil, so 
as to barricade the way of the disease spirit. 

For various ulcers, the Chinese receipt is, 
'' Serpents, pulverized, one ounce ; wasps and 
their nests, one-half ounce ; centipedes, three 
ounces; scorpions, six ounces; toads, ten 
ounces. Grind thoroughly, mix with honey, 
and make into pills.'' 

In the year 1878, when China was suffering 
from the cholera, benevolent citizens printed 
and circulated the following remedy: '' Rub 
the spine with an earthen spoon that has been 
soaked in tea-oil, till small black spots appear; 
then puncture these with a needle down to 
the bone. The poisonous blood will thus be 
removed. Dip your hands in cold water and 
rub the arms in front of each elbow, also the 
popliteal spaces, till they are black, then apply 
a burning lamp-wick. Give the following to 
an adult : One cup of salt heated in an iron 
spoon over a slow fire and mixed with one cup 



io6 Christian Missions. 

of ginger juice and an equal amount of boy's 
urine and cold water/' 

Surgery in its simplest forms is seldom prac- 
ticed by the heathen doctor, notwithstanding 
the multitudes that suffer or die for lack of a 
few strokes of the lancet. The absence of 
precautions for the prevention of disease and 
the presence of such remedies for its cure give 
all the maladies to which flesh is heir a chance 
to meet and hold high carnival among the 
millions of paganism. 

Not only is the death rate high, but the road 
to death is made very rough though travel- 
worn. If in Christian countries the miseries 
of the sick poor have touched Christian hearts 
with pity, and led to the erection of hospitals 
for their care, should not the woes of the blind, 
fever-stricken, leprous-smitten, poverty-crushed 
millions who happen to have been born outside 
of the pale of Christianity awaken some com- 
passion ? If when Jacksonville was smitten by 
the yellow fever and Johnstown by the flood 
the practical sympathy of the entire country 
was awakened, shall we be entirely unconcerned 
about the fate of cities over which the fever 
continually hovers, and where the inhabitants 



The Humanitarian View. 107 

at all seasons ^^are carried away as with a 
flood?" 

Bishop Foster adds, " The conspicuous 
feature of heathenism is poverty. You have 
never seen poverty. It is a word the mean- 
ing of which you do not know. What you 
call poverty is wealth, luxury." 

J. Thompson, F.R.G.S., and a trained trav- 
eler, says : *•' The picture, at best, is a sad one, 
and though a ray of sunlight may brighten it 
here and there, yet, after all, the darkness that 
broods over the land becomes but the more 
palpable under the struggling, fitful light. 
Poverty and ignorance we have among us in 
England, but no poverty so wretched, no 
ignorance so intense as is found among the 
millions of China.*' 

The poverty arises, in part, from the over- 
crowded condition of those old lands. It is 
in part to be attributed to the enormous taxes 
levied on the people, amounting sometimes 
to two thirds the entire income. Rev. H. V. 
Noyes, long resident in China, gives a carefully 
prepared table of statistics concerning the cost 
of idolatrous worship in a single province, 
by which it appears that the expenditures 



io8 Christian Missions. 

range from one fifth to two fifths of the income 
of the people. In some countries it is even 
greater than this. -^ 

These burdens which the people have long 
borne, taken in connection with the fact that 
the wages paid for labor and the gains of trade 
are less in pagan lands than anywhere else, ac- 
count for the fact that the ordinary family 
in non-Christian lands is more miserably 
housed, has poorer clothes, more wretched 
food, and scantier comforts than the people 
elsewhere. Nor is poverty his only or heav- 
iest burden. He is every-where, save where 
Christian arms have secured his emancipation, 
a political slave to a government by absolute 
monarchy which allows him not a single 
right which government is bound to respect. 
Among the sayings of Confucius is one called 
forth by his finding a woman wailing beside 
a grave on the side of the T'ae Mountain. 
One of his disciples inquiring the cause of her 
great sorrow, she replied, '^ My husband's fa- 
ther was killed here by a tiger and my hus- 
band also, and now my son has met the same 
fate." Confucius asked her why she did not 
remove from so dangerous a locality, and when 



The Humanitarian View. log 

she replied, '' There is here no oppressive 
government," he turned to his disciples with 
the remark, ^* My children, remember this : op- 
pressive government is fiercer than a tiger." 
The heathen man has been subject to this 
tiger government time out of mind. He has 
grown patient and stolid attributing his condi- 
tion to Kismet (fate), against which it is vain 
to fight. 

As usual, the heaviest part of these burdens 
falls on the weakest shoulders. The womicn 
and girls of the East have had many eloquent 
pleaders, but none have risen to the merit 
and magnitude of the theme. The traveler 
is surprised by their absence from the public 
or social gathering, or even from the home 
which he may choose to enter. He cannot at 
once realize that she is shut out from the one, 
and that at his approach she fled to the inner 
apartment in the other. What goes on in the 
pagan home behind the latticed work, which 
practically bounds the heathen woman *s world, 
IS hidden. 

We know that she is grossly ignorant, it be- 
ing a sin to even teach her to read, and that 
with her superstition has a clear field. It is 



no Christian Missions. 

painfully true that the chivalric regard for 
woman so characteristic of Anglo-Saxon civil- 
ization is entirely wanting, that her birth was 
a disappointment to her parents, her betrothal 
without her consent, her marriage a legal 
transfer to a master who would have complete 
power over her ; her soul even without future 
existence save as an appendix to a man. As 
a widow she is regarded as accursed of the 
gods, and very properly doomed to the most 
menial services, and as a childless wife can ex- 
pect only wretchedness and neglect. Yet she 
is not dissatisfied, nor bewails her lot. Could 
she know how the women of other lands are 
educated and have a part in the work of 
society she would doubtless bestow on them 
sincere pity, but this only shows the clearer 
her true state. 

If the condition of five hundred million 
heathen women and girls does not constitute 
a valid plaint to the humane spirit which char- 
acterizes the nineteenth century, the world 
may be vainly appealed to for any thing that 
does. Nor is this all. Cryus Hamlin presents 
a plea for the women of Turkey on account of 
polygamy and concubinage, which he asserts 



The Humanitarian View. hi 

are prevalent through the Levant. A Hindu 
woman, in the newspapers of Bombay, pleads 
with her countrymen to deliver the widows of 
her land from the terrible disabilities put upon 
them. Frank Leslie s Illustrated Weekly cites 
the slave-trade of Africa as a reason for the 
formation of an Anglo-American alliance to 
deliver that country from a scourge which, it 
asserts, was never so prevalent as now. Still 
others point to the famines which devastated 
Persia in 1871-1880, Turkey in 1874 and 1884, 
and India and China often, as valid reasons for 
extending help of all kinds to those afflicted 
regions. 

Few would care to take the ground that 
only the sorrows of our own or the English- 
speaking race could be expected to call forth 
our compassion, yet that is the only plea that 
can be urged for silence or inaction. The peo- 
ple of pagan lands have been compared to the 
man who fell among thieves at Jericho, who 
wounded him and left him half dead. In such 
a case, to stretch forth no hand to help is to 
deserve a place with the priest and Levite in 
the pillory of the tenth chapter of Luke*s 
gospel, or with Skipper Ireson, 



112 Christian Missions. 

" Who sailed away 
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay; 
Sailed away from a sinking wreck 
With his own town's-people on her deck." 

The United States may profitably heed the 
words of Professor Henry Drummond when 
he says of the United States: *' The world will 
be bewildered and disappointed if she sepa- 
rates herself from the rest of mankind in fac- 
ing those great wrongs of humanity from 
which seas cannot divide her and which her 
poorer brethren in every part of Europe are 
giving themselves to relieve. America does 
well in refusing the entanglements of Eu- 
ropean politics. Let her be careful lest she 
isolate herself from its humanities." 

It has not been forgotten that the greatest 
charity, after all, is to the souls of men. This 
has been entirely ignored that attention might 
be called to matters of lesser moment but 
about which there could be no dispute. 

The good things which, because of Chris- 
tianity, the Western world enjoys, the mission- 
ary takes and freely shares with his Oriental 
brother. He studies medicine and practices 
and teaches it there, has gained and earned the 
title, ^^the shield of woman/* has demanded 



The Humanitarian View. 113 

and received ]3rotection for at least his own 
converts from oppressive legislation, and re- 
moved the costly and heavy burdens of idola- 
trous worship from their shoulders. It was a 
sight of these things on pagan soil that led 
Professor Charles Darwin to declare that he 
was heartily in favor of Christian missions, 
** on the ground of charity and humanity/' 
and w^hich led him to write to the officers of a 
missionary society, '^ I shall feel proud if your 
committee think fit to elect me an honorary 
member of your society/' 



114 Christian Missions. 



IX. 

STATESMANSHIP AND MISSIONS. 

Fiat justitia ruat ccelum. 

When the disciples were contemplating the 
vast work that had been set before them by the 
Master, and were looking around for means on 
which to depend, Peter said, "■ Lord, here are 
two swords," and the Master answered, ^^ It is 
enough." When afterward he attempted to 
use one of them he Avas bidden to put it up 
into its sheath. They were forewarned that, so 
far from depending on the civil power, they 
w^ould more frequently appear before kings and 
magistrates for condemnation than otherwise, 
and that, " not many wise men after the flesh, 
not many mighty, not many noble,'' would be 
called or numbered among the followers of the 
Nazarine. That this should be the case in the 
early stages of Christianity in any land is quite 
w^hat we would expect. The lust of power and 
the deceitfulness of riches would naturally 
make the rulers, and those high in station, the 



Statesmanship and Missions. 115 

last to accept the truth. Why this should be 
the case where Christianity has long been 
dominant, why politicians and statesmen should 
there be, as a rule, so far behind the masses of 
the people in practical acceptance of Chris- 
tianity, is not so apparent. Why should a 
Christian people seeking Christian ends by 
Christian means be delayed or thwarted by the 
tardy justice or manifest wTong of those whom 
the people have put forward to represent them 
in the chief councils of the nation ? This would 
seem to be the case, whichever of two opposing 
views concerning the nature of government 
w^as in mind. If we accept the view of Mr. 
Mumford, then the nation will be regarded as 
a moral personality. Being a personality, and 
so having a character and presumably a con- 
science, we must agree with Milton, who long 
ago wrote: ^' A nation ought to be one huge 
Christian personage, one mighty growth or 
stature of an honest man as big and compact 
in virtue as in body: for look what the ground 
and causes of happiness are to one man, the 
same ye shall find them in the whole State." 

This seems to have been the view of the 
Emperor William II. of Germany, when, in No- 



ii6 Christian Missions. 

vember, 1888, he said, ^^ The manifestation of 
love to one's neighbor is the duty of the State as 
a public community." If, on the other hand, as 
Mr. Spear contends, the nation is no such 
moral personality, but only an aggregation of 
atoms each one of which has a conscience and 
character, then those who represent those 
atoms in laws and public policy should shape 
the same so as to be in harmony with the pre- 
vailing sentiment." ^* It is a most dangerous 
and destructive delusion," said Theodore Fre- 
linghuysen in the United States Senate, May 
8, 1830, ** to suppose that while as individuals 
and families we are bound to respect the 
principles of religion, yet when we assume the 
character of States and nations these cease to 
exert any legitimate influence." Whatever 
theory we may adopt, the people have a right 
to expect that dearly cherished plans, which 
they individually seek to carry out, shall not 
be antagonized by their own action in an 
associate capacity. The bearing of this on the 
cause of Christian missions will appear when 
we consider how wide-spread the interest in 
this cause is among the best people of the land. 
We are indebted to Dr. Dorchester for the 



Statesmanship and Missions. 117 

following summary of the churches, ministers, 
and communicants of the various Protestant 
denominations of the United States : 

Churches. ^Ministers. Communicants. 

Advent Bodies 3?492 1,321 134,577 

Baptist Bodies 45, 112 30,929 4,051,360 

Lutheran Bodies 7,6to 4,512 1,036,970 

Methodist Bodies 47,470 30,082 4,801,340 

Presbyterian Bodies 15,104 11,428 1,476,962 

Unclassified Bodies 12,689 12,096 1,374,163 



Sadller's 


Hoffman's 


Year-Bo ok. 


Year-Book. 


7,996 


8,118 


7,424 


7,353 


3,133 


2,770 



Aggregate I3i,477 90.368 13,877,422 

ROMAN CATHOLIC. 

Priests 

Churches 

Chapels and stations 

Population 7,855,294 8,157,676 

POPULATIONS. 

Total " New-Churchmen " 10,178 

Universalist, 41,474 families (5 each) 207,370 

Unitarian, no means of estimating 

Roman Catholic (Sadlier's estimate) 7,855,294 

"Evangelical" Bodies, three and a half times 

as many as the enrolled members 48,570,977 

This shows an average of about one member 
in 4.5 inhabitants, on an estimated population 
for 1888 of 62,300,000. The evangelical popu- 
lation is 77 per cent, of the whole population 



ii8 Christian Missions. 

of the United States. The Roman Catholic 
population is 1 1 per cent, of the whole. 

These twenty niillion and more of actual 
members are identified with the cause of 
missions. They manifest their interest by 
giving each year to the cause the sum of three 
million dollars. Some part of this sum is col- 
lected by the children, some of it represents 
the widow's mite, and much of it was given 
with no small self-sacrifice on the part of the 
donors. A still more valuable gift, and testi- 
monial as well to the interest had in this cause, 
is some thousands of the choice men and 
women, w^ho at home or in foreign lands are 
engaged in the work of missions. The theme 
calls forth great conventions of the people and 
is the inspiration of no little effort, song, and 
prayer. The interest which so large a part of 
the people take in this cause is certainly valid 
ground for the claim that nothing shall be 
done to antagonize this work unless in extrem^e 
political emergency, especially that no injustice 
shall be practiced toward those nations or 
wards of our own nation that the people are 
endeavoring to impress w^ith the precepts of 
Christianity. Further than this, Christianity 



Statesmanship and Missions. 119 

cannot, in justice, ask the government to go, 
and does not wish to. It rests its claim on the 
same ground taken by the fishermen of the 
New England coast, who, in view of the im- 
portance of that interest to so large a popula- 
tion, ask that no action shall be taken in the 
treaty on the fishery question that shall jeopar- 
dize their interest. Likewise, the wine-growers 
of the Pacific Slope, the wool-men of the North- 
west, the farmers of the Middle States and the 
manufacturers of the East, set forth to Congress 
the wide-spread interest in these various indus- 
tries as a reason for legislation for or against 
increased tarift''. During the discussion of the 
Edmunds Bill in the Senate, a company of 
merchants of New York telegraphed, '' Utah 
buys twenty million dollars of goods a year — 
hands off." In like manner, twenty million 
actual church members who consult together, 
pray and sacrifice for the cause of missions, 
respectfully urge that fact as a reason for care 
in all government action touching that interest. 
But what has been the record at this point ? 
From the earliest settlement of the country the 
churches have been at work to evangelize the 
native Indian tribes. Brainard and Eliot were 



I20 Christian Missions. 

conspicuous examples among the early workers, 
but were soon surpassed by the Moravians, and 
even the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
undertook, at one time, the work. For more 
than two hundred years it has been prosecuted 
by the most self-denying men of all denomina- 
tions, including Roman Catholics and Quakers. 
It has ended in failure. Some tribes have 
indeed been civilized and Christianized, but the 
great bulk of the Indian nation is morally, and 
every other way, worse off than when the 
Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. 

This is not, as has sometimes been supposed, 
because they are dying off. Three hundred 
thousand, the present number, is supposed to 
be as many as the tribes ever numbered. It 
has not been because the Indian cannot stand 
civilization. Where he has had a chance, as at 
Hampton and Carlisle, and some of the reser- 
vations, he has shown that, whatever else has 
made against his welfare, it is not civilization. 

The assertion of Catlin concerning the Indian 
character has never been disproved. *^ I fear- 
lessly assert," he says, *^ to the world, and I 
defy contradiction, that the North American 
Indian is every-where in his native state a 



Statesmanship and Missions. 121 

highly moral and religious being, endowed by 
his Maker with an intuitive knowledge of some 
great Author of his being and the universe, in 
dread of whose displeasure he continually lives, 
with the apprehension before him of a future 
state, when he expects to be rewarded or pun- 
ished according to the merits he has gained or 
forfeited in this world.'' 

Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, who formed 
his opinions fromx residence among them, says 
**The North American Indian is the noblest 
type of a heathen man on the earth. He 
recognizes a great Spirit. He believes in im- 
mortality ; he has a quick intellect ; he is a clear 
thinker. He is brave and fearless and, until 
betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith ; he 
has a passionate love for his children and 
counts it joy to die for his people." 

It would be easy to multiply testimony to 
the same end from Lewis and Clarke, Governor 
Stephens, Colonels Steptoe, Boone, and Brent 
and General Harney, nor is their testimony 
invalidated by the fact that the noble red man 
is now a man of many vices and few virtues. 
The principal, though of course not the only, 
reason why attempts to evangelize the Indian 



122 Christian Missions. 

tribes have failed, has been the treatment which 
they have received from the United States 
government. Time and again territory has 
been granted them, by solemn treaty, where 
they could dwell in peace and have a chance 
to profit by the instructions of the Christian 
teachers whom they were generally willing to 
receive ; but as often some pretext has been 
found for setting aside the treaty, robbing 
them of their lands, and bidding them, like the 
crowds of a city, to ^^ move on." 

Deprived of means of support, stung with a 
sense of their wrongs, and homeless, no wonder 
they have scorned instruction from the pale- 
face teachers. Bishop Whipple says of the 
entire history of the transactions of our gov- 
ernment with the Indians, which Helent Hunt 
Jackson calls ^^ A Century of Dishonor :'' '' The 
sad revelation of broken faith, of violated treat- 
ise, and of inhuman deeds of violence will 
bring a blush of shame to the cheeks of those 
who love their country. They will wonder 
how our rulers have dared to so trifle with 
justice and to provoke the anger of God.'' 

The sad plight in which the law left the 
Indian after robbing him of his lands enlisted 



Statesmanship and Missions. 123 

the interest of Governor Horatio Seymour, 
who said: *^ Every human being born upon 
this continent, or who comes here from any 
quarter of the world, whether savage or civil- 
ized, can go to our courts for protection ex- 
cept those who belong to the tribes who once 
owned the country. The cannibal from the 
islands of the Pacific, the worst criminals from 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, can appeal to the 
law and courts for their rights of person or 
property, all save our native Indians, who 
above all should be protected from wrong." 
The impression which all this has made on the 
Indians was expressed by Red Cloud, when, 
bidding adieu to friends he had visited at the 
Black Hills, he said: '^ Farewell; if I do not 
meet you again on earth, I will beyond the 
grave, in a land where white men cease to be 
liars." 

*• Our great trouble," says Julius H. Seelye, 
of Amherst, '' is that we have sought to exact 
justice from the Indian while exhibiting no 
justice to him.." *' The Indian bureau is often 
unable to fulfill the treaties," writes another, 
*' because Congress has failed to make appro- 
priations." These explanations, however good 



124 Christian Missions. 

fail to reach the Indian, who only knows that 
he has been treated in bad faith and that 
hunger knows no'law. As a fugitive from the 
reservation he is hunted down by the cavalry, 
but not every general commanding such an 
expedition has the candor of General Crook, 
who, about to set out on one of these cam- 
paigns with which the country is so familiar, 
said to a friend, who remarked ^^ it is hard, to 
go on such a campaign," ^^ Yes, but the hardest 
thing is to fight those whom you know are in 
the right." '^Your father hath deceived me 
and changed my wages ten times'* was not 
more true of the treatment Jacob received 
from Laban, than of the conduct of the govern- 
ment toward these defenseless wards. A policy 
just and honorable, even to the degree shown 
by the Canadian government to the tribes of 
the North-west, would have averted several 
expensive wars and saved from failure the best 
intentioned and persevering efforts to elevate 
the red man. The words of Latimer, though 
four hundred years old, concerning the miseries 
of the English populace and the responsibility 
of the nobles, are applicable here : ^* My lords 
of the laity and clergy, in the name of God, I 



Statesmanship and Missions. 125 

advise you take heed. When the Lord of 
hosts shall see the flock scattered, spilt, and 
lost, if he follow the trace of the blood, it will 
lead him straightway unto this court.'' The 
relations of the United States government to 
the Chinese furnish another example. The 
interest which the American Churches take in 
the conversion of the Chinese is indicated by 
the following statistics of the various missions 
there : 

Denomination. Mission- Native Communi- 

aries. Helpers. cants. 

American Board 20 109 816 

Baptist 30 43 1,340 

Protestant Episcopal 21 20 496 

Presbyterians 102 107 3,788 

Reformed 15 22 844 

Methodist Episcopal 80 132 3,903 

Southern Baptist 20 25 776 

Methodist Episcopal, South. 34 11 286 

Presbyterian, South 19 5 82 

It is thus apparent that all the leading 
denominations of the country are earnestly 
engaged in the evangelization of the Celestials. 
The better classes of the Chinese have all 
along manifested no little disrelish to the 
message of foreign teachers, but of late this 
aversion is more marked. This seems strange 



126 Christian Missions. 

when we remember that our missionaries 
in that quarter in zeal, purity of life, and self- 
sacrifice are not excelled by any class of men 
anywhere. The primary reason why these pious 
labors are not producing the result we might 
expect is the treatment the Chinese have re- 
ceived from so-called Christian governments. 
As to our own nation, it is sufficient to refer 
to the course of action culminating in the 
Chinese Exclusion Bill. Up to the year 1880 
a treaty existed between the United States 
and China by which the subjects of each 
might visit or reside in the country of the 
other with full protection. In that year we 
sent over a commission to get the Chinese 
government to agree that we might have the 
privilege of limiting immigration to this coun- 
try, which was granted with the understand- 
ing that it should in no case be altogether 
prohibited. 

Six months after a bill passed both houses 
of Congress suspending the coming of Chinese 
laborers to this country for ten years, and re- 
quiring of those already here, if they desired 
to leave for any purpose, first to register at a 
custom house and take a passport containing 



Statesmanship and Missions. 127 

an accurate description of their persons, which 
certificate would entitle them to return. So 
far all was according to at least the letter of 
the treaty. What followed is well stated by 
Senator Henry L. Dawes in the pages of the 
Forum : " But the warfare upon Chinese labor- 
ers grew in intensity hour by hour. All polit- 
ical parties on the Pacific coast made common 
cause in waging it, and all political parties 
away from there vied with each other in urg- 
ing it on.- Preparatory to the presidential 
campaign there was a race among politicians 
of the East for the cup offered by the voters on 
the Pacific slope to the best hater of these de- 
spised Celestials. 

" During the late session of Congress a treaty 
was negotiated at Washington by the execu- 
tive with the Chinese minister resident here 
which permitted the absolute exclusion for 
twenty years of all Chinese laborers, whether 
once resident or not, except such poor fellows 
as had left here a wife, child, parent, or one 
thousand dollars of property, and had also left 
before going awa^ with the collector of the 
port a minute description in writing of these 
various articles, and had come back within a 



128 Christian Missions. 

year. When this treaty was submitted to the 
Senate for approval, that body, as if anxious 
for an opportunity to share in the ultimate 
opprobrium which must rest on all this busi- 
ness, amended the text, giving the screw one 
more turn. 

** The Chinese minister acquiesced with a sigh, 
but the amendments required ratification in 
China, which was likely to consume too much 
of the valuable time which was needed in the 
race. Congress, w^ithout waiting, passed an 
act, dependent upon the ratification of this 
treaty, making it * unlawful for any Chinese 
person, whether a subject of China or any 
other power, to enter the United States,' ex- 
cept * Chinese officials, students, merchants, 
travelers for leisure or curiosity,' and except 
those who have left behind them when they 
went away, as before described, wife, child, 
parent, or property. 

** And all excepted persons were, before set- 
ting foot on our soil, compelled to run the 
gauntlet of the most complicated system of 
listing, description, certificate, and passport 
that human ingenuity could devise. In the 
meantime, the home government, to which 



Statesmanship and Missions. 129 

the treaty had been sent back for ratification, 
began to show some signs of ^ the spirit of a 
man/ and, demurring to some of the pro- 
visions of the treaty, took time for further 
dehberation and discussion. 

^' Upon the spur of a mere rumor that the 
treaty had been rejected, Congress, in hot 
anger and in hot haste, for there was no time 
to lose, and the Pacific slope had its ear to the 
ground, passed, without any reference to com- 
mittee, a law unqualifiedly and absolutely for- 
bidding any Chinese laborer who now is, or 
shall hereafter be, a resident of the United 
States, who may leave the country, from ever 
returning on any conditions whatever. Pres- 
ident Cleveland approved this bill, after the 
receipt of official information that the treaty 
had not been rejected by the Chinese govern- 
ment, but that there were points in it which 
they desired to reconsider with us. He ac- 
companied this approval, however, with a spe- 
cial message giving good reasons why he 
should not have approved it at all, and sug- 
gesting alterations and amendments of the 
very bill which he had just signed. This is a 
brief summary of our dealings by treaty and 



130 Christian Missions. 

legislation with the subject of Chinese immi- 
gration during a period of twenty years, cul- 
minating in an absolute exclusion from our 
shores hereafter of all Chinese laborers, both 
those coming for the first time and those re- 
turning here, no matter what relations of busi- 
ness or family they have left behind under a 
treaty pledge of safe return and undisturbed 
residence/' 

Senator Dawes adds, *^ It is not the asser- 
tion of this power, but the manner and the 
assigned cause for its assertion, which will be 
likely to occasion criticism. There has been 
nothing open or manly, either in the negotia- 
tion of the treaties that conceded it or in the 
legislation in conformity to, as well as that 
in conflict with, those treaties. There is no- 
where in the whole series an avowal of the 
real purpose which prompted our persistent 
zeal." 

July 8, 1889, Mr. Chang Yen Hoon, then 
Chinese minister to the United States, wrote 
to Mr. Blaine, referring to the action of the 
United States Supreme Court in deciding 
^^ that the act of 1888 is in contravention of 
the express stipulations of the treaty of 1868 ; *' 



Statesmanship and Missions. 131 

but that as it is the exercise of the sovereign 
power vested in Congress it must be respected 
as the supreme law of the land." ** You will 
pardon me," continued the minister, *^ if I 
express my amazement that such a doctrine 
should be published to the world by the 
august tribunal for whose members, my per- 
sonal acquaintances, I entertain such profound 
respect. It forces upon me the conviction that 
in the three years which I have spent in 
this country I have not been able fully and 
correctly to comprehend the principles and 
systems of your great government. In my 
country w^e have acted upon the conviction 
that where two nations deliberately and sol- 
emnly entered upon treaty stipulations they 
thereby formed a sacred compact, from which 
they could not be honorably discharged except 
through friendly negotiations and a new 
agreement. I was, therefore, not prepared 
to learn, through the medium of that great 
tribunal, that there was a way recognized in the 
law and practice of this country whereby your 
government could release itself from treaty 
obligations without consultation with, or the 
consent of, the other party to what we had 



132 Christian Missions. 

been accustomed to regard as a sacred instru- 
ment When it is remembered that the 

treaty relations between the two nations were 
estabhshed at the express sohcitation of your 
government, and that its every request for 
further stipulations has been met in the high- 
est spirit of complaisance, I think you must 
sympathize with my astonishment that the 
body which itself initiated this policy, and 
which represents the intelligence and justice of 
the great American people, should trample 
the treaties under foot, and grossly offend the 
nation which has always held these compacts 
in such sacred esteem." 

Similar words might be used to charac- 
terize the conduct of most of the public offi- 
cials in regard to the Rock Springs massacre 
of the North-west, where about a score of 
Chinese were cruelly murdered by a mob and 
their homes and property destroyed. The 
government was not to blame for the crime 
more than for any other act of lawlessness ; 
but the subsequent action of the local and 
public officials has not received so merciful a 
judgment. The coroner's jury said, *' We 
find that these persons came to their death at 



Statesmanship and Missions. 133 

the hands of persons unknown." The grand 
jury said, '' We have been entirely unable to 
ascertain bv whom these outra^^es were com- 
mitted." The secretary of state, when ap- 
pealed to for indemnity to those who, while 
under solemn treaty, had lost all their property, 
replied, that '' While the Chinese government 
did promise to indemnify Americans who suf- 
fer from mobs in China the American govern- 
ment did not promise to indemnify Chinese." 
Nevertheless, as a gratuity, he recommended 
that some recompense should be made. A 
year after the occurrence the survivors were 
still in doubt as to whether the claim of the 
Chinese minister would be favorably received 
at Washington and some reparation made. 
The Chinese have newspapers in their country 
not unlike our own, and through them the 
better classes are kept informed of govern- 
ment affairs. The impression which these 
events have produced touching the reception 
of Christianity may be inferred from an oc- 
currence narrated by an English missionary 
as taking place in a native chapel, where he 
had explained to the congregation the ex- 
cellent nature of Christianity, which he urged 



134 Christian Missions. 

his hearers to accept. One of them, whom he 
described as having a ^* dress bordering on 
the shabby, and whose style seemed to indi- 
cate that he was more famihar with the artisan 
class than with any other, though his face had 
a peculiar look of sharpness and intelligence,'' 
rose, and with a look of suppressed hatred and 
bitterness said : 

'* O, then, your object in coming here is to 
teach us charity and benevolence and truth 
and uprightness, is it ?'' I said, *^ Yes." " If this 
be your object, then, why is it that you your- 
selves act in a spirit so directly the reverse of 
these, and force upon us instead your abom- 
inable opium ? If your nation believes in these 
doctrines as divine why has it imported this 
poisonous stuff, to bring poverty and distress 
and ruin throughout our land?" And as he 
went on he became excited, and his eyes 
flashed and his eloquence grew. Chinaman- 
like he rolled his head from side to side, 
while the congregation (which in the mean- 
time had grown largely) looked on with ap- 
proving sympathy. I was so utterly taken 
aback that I could do nothing but quietly sit 
still until he had given full expression to his 



Statesmanship and Missions. 135 

feelings. My surprise arose not so much from 
the matter as the manner of his accusation. 
It was given forth in the most offensive lan- 
guage, and with a force such as I had never 
met with on any previous occasion. After he 
had finished what he had to say the congre- 
gation that was scattered about — some sitting 
on the forms, others leaning by the door-way, 
and others again bending over the backs 
of the seats, listening breathlessly to what 
the man was saying — with one consent 
turned their faces upon me, w^aiting without 
uttering a sound to hear w^iat would be my 
reply. I must say that I never felt so un- 
comfortable in any public meeting in my life 
before ! 

What the man had said I knew and felt to 
be truth. I began, therefore, somewhat stam- 
meringly, to say something in self-defense, 
when the man at once stopped me by saying, 
^' There is no use in your trying to get out of 
the matter by saying that you have nothing 
to do with this opium system. Your country 
has. It is your nation, England, that is re- 
sponsible for all this ruin caused by opium. 
It was the English guns that compelled our em- 



136 Christian Missions. 

peror to sanction the trade, and it is through 
England that it may now be sold throughout 
the length and breadth of the land without our 
government being able to do any thing effect- 
ual to prevent its spread throughout the 
kingdom." The facts of the case were all on 
his side, though somewhat offensively stated. 
England's share in this opium question is one 
which no reasoning and no sophistry can turn 
to her honor. Whatever of greatness or glory 
there may be in her history to which she can 
point, there is at least one blot upon her 
escutcheon which will not be easily effaced, 
and that is that she was the direct means of 
stimulating and protecting a trade that in- 
volves a third of the human race in evils which 
no language can describe. 

Would it be strange if some Japanese, lis- 
tening to a sermon on Paul's text before 
Felix, should stop the preacher to ask if the 
kind of justice he meant was the kind shown 
by the United States in retaining for so 
many years the balance of the indemnity 
fund ? 

Could we blame the natives of Alaska if 
they refused to listen to a gospel from the 



Statesmanship and Missions. 137 

lips of the same race that had treated their 
women with such indignity ? 

When will the better classes of Mexico 
forget that General Grant testified to what 
they already knew, that the invasion of Mexico, 
which cost that country Texas and Cahfornia, 
was without excuse in justice, and simply the 
measure of a political party to gain more terri- 
tory ? The real reason for the war was quaintly 
hinted at by James Russell Lowell, in the 
famous Biglow papers. 

*• Ez fer Mexico, 'taint no great glory to lick it; 

But *tvv^ould ]>e a clurned shame to go pulling o' triggers 

To extend the aree of abusin' the niggers." 

In general these acts of injustice have been 
committed in the interest of some political 
party. The interests of Christianity and of 
twenty million Christians have been ignored in 
the effort to save a party. However it might 
be with the millennium, the next election must 
be made secure. Nor are these things peculiar 
to our own land. Dr. Cyrus Hamline says : 
*' Christianity has done but little as yet to 
meet the ?\Ioslem problem. It is terribly 
handicapped by Christian governments. While 
in Islam every thing, good and evil, works to- 



138 Christian Missions. 

gether with the Moslem missionaries and helps 
forward their work, the Christian missionary is 
embarrassed on every hand. The shameless 
and abominable lives of so-called Christians 
who are enemies to the cross of Christ are a 
great obstacle to their work. They deliver 
their message ; but here comes a counter- 
message, audible and visible and pernicious. 
The worst thing of all is that Christian govern- 
ments authorize and protect the traffic in 
opium and alchoholic liquors with equal stupid- 
ity and wickedness. China and Africa are fill- 
ing up with rum and opium faster than with 
missionaries. This astounding measure of 
Christian governments will prove as injurious 
to enterprise and commerce as to missions.'* 

We entirely agree with him in his conclud- 
ing sentence. ** It is time for the Church of 
God to arise and demand that Christian gov- 
ernments shall not antagonize Christian mis- 
sions." 

There is little doubt that, if Christian gov- 
ernments would adopt a just Christian policy 
toward pagan and semi-pagan nations, the mis- 
sionary might hope to gain converts among 
the influential and from this vantage-ground 



Statesmanship and Missions. 139 

more readily reach the masses, instead of being 
driven, as he generally is, to commence with the 
pariahs of society. In the days of Constantine 
and Theodosius, in the times of Eadwine and 
Clovis, and more recently in the Fiji Islands, 
the first converts were from the higher classes. 
It is humiliating thus to be obliged to plead 
for justice, not on the ground that it is just, 
but that twenty million Christian citizens ask 
it at the hands of government. 



I40 Christian Missions. 



X. 

METHODS. 

Non quomodo sed quid. 

The era of criticism on which Christian 
missions seem to have entered is rather to be 
rejoiced over as a sign of progress than de- 
plored as a token of dechne. 

This appears when we notice that the critics 
now confine themselves to methods of work, 
whereas formerly they *^ compassed about and 
beset behind and before/' after the fashion of 
the bulls of Bashan, the entire subject. 

This amounts to an admission that there is 
no longer a question as to the duty and prac- 
ticability of the project, and that the question 
of method is the only debatable ground. In 
the conduct of our Civil War, so long as craven- 
hearted and faithless politicians called in ques- 
tion the wisdom or justice of the attempt to 
preserve the Union, the country was in peril ; 
when at length they turned attention to 
methods that were being used or should be, or 



Methods. 141 

to the conduct of the men who were conduct- 
ing the war, the victory was assured. Fifty 
years ago, Sidney Smith in the pages of the 
EdinburgJi Review gave examples of the old 
methods of opposing the cause of missions ; the 
new has been more recently illustrated by 
Canon Taylor in the Fortnightly. The change 
is significant. 

** All missionaries, let me say,'* says Bishop 
Steele, ** owe a debt of gratitude to those who 
call attention to the mistakes and failure of 
missions.*' The missionary should even wel- 
come the strictures of enemies which help to a 
settlement of doubtful questions. Two methods 
for the conduct of missions are now advocated, 
which an American quarterly has styled the 
method of stipendiary missions and that of 
martyr missions. In the first of these, a mis- 
sionary is selected and sent out by the repre- 
sentatives of an organized society which 
assumes the responsibility of a stated salary 
for his support, of which the Missionary So- 
ciety of the Methodist Episcopal Church is an 
example. 

The second method makes more of indi- 
vidual action. The missionary goes out with- 



142 Christian Missions. 

out promise of any support, depending on his 
own exertions and the providence of God to 
supply his wants, with what chance aid may 
come from friends of himself or his cause. 
Bishop Taylor^s African work and that of the 
China Inland Mission are examples of this 
method. 

Martyr missions have gained a host of friends 
of late, though their enthusiasm would mean 
more if they themselves evinced any eagerness 
to join the ** noble army of martyrs," or were 
willing to accept of any other than the sti- 
pendiary method for the supply of their own 
wants, however much they advocated them 
for others. The method contemplated by 
martyr missions has, on the other hand, been 
severely criticised as a waste of valuable lives 
and resources ; and from an official eminence 
we have the statement, " It has often been 
tried but the result has in no case corres- 
ponded with the expectation of its projectors.** 
A glance at the history of missions will con- 
vince those who are not hopelessly biased 
that martyr missions have indeed often been 
tried and that they have often been grandly 
successful ; indeed, that whatever success 



Methods. 143 

the cause of missions has had has been 
mainly through martyr missions. It further- 
more reveals that stipendary missions have 
not often been tried ; indeed are something 
quite new to the history of the Church, whose 
real value remains to be seen. 

To appreciate this it is necessary that we 
reject the baseless supposition that the mis- 
sionary work is a movement of this century or 
that efforts have not been made for the con- 
version of the heathen by the Greek and 
Roman Churches, just as genuine as our own. 
There have been, apart from the movement 
under consideration, three great missionary 
epochs, widely separated in point of time, but 
one in spirit and singularly one as to the 
methods used. 

They were the evangelization of the Roman 
Empire by the Church of the first three cent- 
uries, the conversion of the nations of northern 
Europe by the great missionary movement of 
the sixth and seventh centuries, and the mis- 
sionary revival of the Moravian Church of the 
eighteenth century. Jerusalem, lona, and 
Herrnhut were the three great centers and 
are the present Meccas of missions. In each 



144 Christian Missions. 

of these movements martyr missions had elo- 
quent illustration. 

The first, which by divine command began 
at Jerusalem, was so marked and glorious that 
the author of The Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire found it necessary to 
devote an entire chapter to explain away the 
more remarkable features of it. 

A company of fishermen, tax-gatherers, and 
artisans, without influence or military backing, 
begin their testimony at Jerusalem, but soon 
go to Samaria and Antioch, then to Asia 
Minor, then across the sea to Greece and on 
to Rome. Others turn to the East and visit 
Persia and Arabia, while still others visit the 
land of the pyramids and the Nile. They 
make converts, empty idol temples of wor- 
shipers, call forth letters from consuls, make 
the highway and wilderness places resound 
with the praises of newly converted souls, and 
fix the attention of the crowds of the great 
cities with doctrines new and startling. Per- 
secution rages. Nero uses some of them for 
burning torches to light his gardens, and 
amuses the populace by turning the lions on 
others in the amphitheater, with only the re- 



Methods. i45 

suit of sowing a bountiful supply of martyr 
seed. In vain he issues edicts of persecution. 
He cannot even keep the new faith out of his 
own palace and household, where the saints 
are found and from whence they send greet- 
ings. His edicts become more and more in- 
operative, because they often fall into the 
hands of officers who are themselves Christians. 
Finally it is found vain longer to resist, and 
the great empire becomes Christian in form as 
it already was in fact. As to the method 
used in this age of marvels— it was plainly that 
of martyr missions. There was no edifice in 
Jerusalem called the missionary building of 
the Nazarenes, nor was there any session of a 
committee on missions. They had not even 
a treasurer of a transit fund. Thomas went 
to India, Bartholomew to Persia, and Peter to 
Rome with no promise of support. They de- 
pended on their own labors, on the gratitude 
of those to whom they ministered, on the gifts 
of friends, and always on the providence of 
God. The apostle to the Gentiles insisted on 
supporting himself by the labor of his own 
hands. Others depended for the supply of 
their necessities on the churches which every- 
10 



146 Christian Missions. 

where sprung up. In those days every be- 
liever was required to be a missionary. His 
first great duty was to testify for Christ. 
Christian sailors, soldiers, and merchants, 
wdierever duty called them or persecution 
drove them, were expected to speak boldly for 
the new faith. To refrain from this w^as not 
only a sin, but a sin which it was currently be- 
lieved had never forgiveness. Hence John 
was on the Isle of Patmos *^ for the word of 
God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.** Peter 
confessed before the council that he ^' could 
not but speak of the things which he had seen 
and heard.** Phebe became *' a servant of 
the Church in Cenchrea.*' Priscilla and 
Aquila were ** helpers in Christ Jesus,** even 
to the extent of 'Maying down their necks'* 
for him. Mary '' bestowed much labor.** An- 
dronicus and Junia were '* fellow-prisoners of 
note.** Triphena and Tryphosa 'labored 
much in the Lord.'* Timothy *' endured hard- 
ship as a good soldier.'* Onesiphorus made a 
journey to Rome to succor an imprisoned 
apostle, of whose chain he was not ashamed, 
while Paul, facile princcps^ was ** in labors more 
abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons 



Methods. 147 

more frequent, in deaths oft," constrained by 
a mighty love which led him ever on to the 
regions beyond, as an engine is kept throbbing 
by its furnace fires. The spirit of the entire 
movement was that which actuates all true 
missionaries, but the method was peculiarly 
that of martyr missions. Here was an example 
of self-supporting missions, w^here the result 
not only corresponded with, but exceeded, the 
expectations of the projectors. 

The second great missionary movement was 
directed toward the conversion of the nations 
of northern Europe. The proclamation of 
Theodosius, which, rather than the edict of 
Constantine, marked the conquest of the Ro- 
man Empire to Christianity, found the tribes of 
northern Europe savage as to civilization and 
pagans in religion. A map of the world in 
A. D. 600 w^ould certainly represent all Europe 
north of the Rhine in jet black. The Church 
planted in Britain had about perished with the 
conquest of the country by the Saxons, and 
Gildas, their own historian, admits that they 
never thought it worth while to attempt to 
teach the Saxons. A few sparks may have 
remained alive among the embers in Ireland, 



148 Christian Missions, 

but all else was blackness of darkness. Strange 
to say, the light which dawned on these na- 
tions sitting in darkness was not from Jerusa- 
lem or Rome, but from these waning sparks, 
which had somehow been kindled into a Pharos 
beacon light which shone out all over Europe. 
One little island on the north coast of Scotland 
was the center of this movement, 
lona — 

" Isle of Columba's cell, 
Where Christian piety's soul-cheering spark, 
Kindled from heaven between the light and dark 
Of time, shone like a morning star." 

Well might Wordsworth and Johnson grow 
eloquent over a bit of land, three miles in 
length and half as broad, where Columba estab- 
lished his missionary training-college for the 
evangelization of the North. He was only one 
of many, though the greatest, and lona only one 
center, though the most conspicuous among 
several, and the year when he established his 
college only the center in point of time of a 
movement that was widespread and long con- 
tinued. The inspiration of the work was not 
received from Rome. It was singularly spon- 
taneous and evangelical, and more allied to the 



Methods. 149 

spirit of Protestantism than of Roman Cathol- 
icism. It was even antagonized by Rome at 
several points. According to Columba's plan, 
those whose hearts w^ere on fire to preach to 
the northern nations were invited to lona, 
where they received a thorough training for the 
work, which included manual labor and the 
trades, as well as prayer, meditation, and 
instruction. They w^ere not all ordained, and 
many of them were married. *^ From this nest 
of Columba's the sacred doves went forth," 
generally in companies of twelve. The first 
step was to build a mission house, or monas- 
tery, as a basis of supplies and a refuge in emer- 
gencies. Sometimes as traveling evangelists 
they cut loose from all ties and went out w^ith- 
out purse or scrip or two coats, eating such 
things as were set before them, and when this 
failed resorting to roots and berries of the for- 
est. A deed of Boniface illustrated the bold 
martyr spirit which actuated them. Coming 
to Fitzlar he saw the thunder-oak of Grismar, 
which the people so reverenced that he who 
broke a twig expected instant death. Plainly 
the way to uproot this superstition was to cut 
down the tree. This Boniface proceeded to do, 



150 Christian Missions^ 

to the consternation of the beholders, who at 
once reasoned that if Thor could not protect 
himself he must be useless. Of the wood of 
the oak Boniface made a chapel. 

Concerning the manner of life of the mis- 
sionaries the oldest of the English historians 
writes : 

*^ Receiving only the necessary food from 
those they taught, living themselves in all re- 
spects conformably to what they prescribed to 
others, and being disposed to suffer any ad- 
versity and even to die for the truth they 
preached.'' 

Not every king into whose domains they ^ 
entered received them so favorably as did 
Athelbert, who said after hearing the first ser- 
mon, *^ We will not molest you, but give you 
favorable entertainment and take care to sup- 
ply your necessary sustenance.'' 

That they were soon able to care for them- 
selves seems evident from the fact that the 
pope, when he heard of the great success of 
the missions, sent sacred vessels and vestments 
for the altars, also ornaments for the churches, 
and relics of the holy apostles, and books, but 
no money. The method in this case was that 



Methods. 151 

of self-support. It received eloquent Illustra- 
tion in the labors of Ulphilas, Martin of Tours, 
Columbanus, Cyril, Methodius, and Anschor. 
The story of their labors, trials, and heroic 
deaths remains for the pen of some historian 
unbiased enough to do justice to the Chris- 
tians of the Middle Ages. The disappearance 
of every vestige of idolatry from the regions 
where they taught is evidence enough of their 
success. This was another example of martyr 
missions which was not disappointing to the 
projectors, The most successful missions of 
the Roman Catholic Church have generally 
been conducted after this plan. The famous 
Society for the Propagation of the Faith was 
only formed in Lyons in 1822, and has never 
raised more than one and a quarter million dol- 
lars a year, which sum will not account for the 
world-wide missions of that Church. 

The third gr.eat missionary movement was 
inaugurated at Herrnhut, Germany, in the year 

1733. 

It was not simply begotten by the Mora- 
vian Church— it was the Church. As usual, 
the movement was great in proportion as 
the agents that carried it on were poor and 



152 Christian Missions. 

obscure. The Moravian Church numbered only 
six hundred poor despised exiles when they 
commenced to go abroad. So late as 1886 the 
home churches of Europe and the United 
States were only able to raise ;^ 16,803, though 
the proceeds of industrial enterprises and of 
schools connected with the missions brought 
up the sum to ;^5o,ooo. This shows that the 
stipendiary plan, if adopted, must have dwarfed 
their undertaking to a point beneath the notice 
of history. Moravian missions are historic 
mainly because they were martyr missions. 
With such poverty and paucity of numbers 
they were able in nine years from the begin- 
ning to send missionaries to Greenland, St. 
Thomas, St. Croix, to Surinam, Rio de Barbice, 
to the blacks and Indians of North America, 
to Lapland, Tartary, Algiers, Guinea, Cape of 
Good Hope, and Ceylon. 

In the year in which Perry gained his great 
victory on Lake Erie a review of the past 
showed that, with one hundred and fifty-seven 
missionaries in the field, they had won a greater 
victory at thirty-three different points, where 
they had enrolled 27,400 converts. The niethocj 
adopted for carrying on this work was essen^ 



Methods. 153 

tially that of self-support. The missionaries 
were at Hberty to state their wants to the 
home church, which supplied such of them as 
their limited means would allow. For the bal- 
ance they depended on themselves and God. 

Christian David, the pioneer of the move- 
ment, wrote concerning his departure on this 
work : 

" There was no need for much time or ex- 
pense for our equipment. The congregation 
consisted chiefly of poor despised exiles who 
had not much to give, and we ourselves had 
nothing but the clothes on our backs. Being 
accustomed to make a shift with little we did 
not trouble our heads how we should get to 
Greenland or how we should live in that 
country.'' 

Yet they were not without plans for the 
future, for when asked how they intended to 
support themselves, providing they succeeded 
in reaching there, they answered that they in- 
tended to build a house and cultivate the land 
by the labor of their hands, that they might 
not be burdensome to any. When told that 
there was no wood in that country they re- 
plied, '^ Then we will dig in the earth and lodge 



154 Christian Missions. 

there/' They proved their scheme to be feas- 
ible by carrying it out and making the Green- 
land mission a grand success. 

Leonard Dober, who had it on his heart to 
go to St. Thomas, said, '* If no other way offers 
I will sell myself as a slave there." He com- 
menced work at St. Thomas by hiring out as a 
steward to a planter. When the way opened 
he devoted himself wholly to his chosen work 
and won the praise of Bryan Edwards, the 
historian of the island, who testified to the 
sound judgment, evangelical spirit, and great 
success of Dober and his companions. 

Of the work of the brethren in South Amer- 
ica, whither some of them went in 1738, we 
read, ^* After working some time in the com- 
pany's plantation they took a piece of land on 
the borders of the colony and cultivated it on 
their own account, in the hope of at length 
finding an opportunity to mak^ known the 
Gospel among the pagan inhabitants.'' 

Others in 1 847 established a mission among 
the Tartars, going first to St. Petersburg and 
then two thousand miles overland to Czarizin. 
*■ Here they began to erect the buildings nec- 
essary for their accommodation, to cultivate 



Methods. 155 

the land, and to work at their respective 
trades, with a view to the support of the 
colony." 

A physician of their number undertook the 
establishment of a mission in Persia in 1789. 
" His plan, which he carried out, was to practice 
as a physician in Cairo ; to learn the Arabic 
language ; to establish a correspondence with 
the patriarch of the Copts, and through him to 
form an acquaintance with the Abana himself." 

The leader of the company that in 1752 went 
to Labrador had before visited that region 
several times as mate of a fishing vessel. Small 
wonder that with such a practiced man in the 
lead '* they took a house ready framed, a boat, 
various kinds of implements and seeds for the 
cultivation of the ground." The inability of 
the home church to supply the wants of those 
who went out made it necessary that they 
should be men who had had experience in the 
practical affairs of life and had some trade by 
which they could live. Aside from this it was 
the settled belief of this community of mission- 
aries that the habits of a student were not so 
well calculated to form a person for that work 
as those of a mechanic. 



156 Christian Missions. 

In 1759 thirteen single brethren left for 
Tranquebar, an island in the Bay of Bengal, 
where, '^ having purchased a piece of ground 
about a mile from the town, they built them- 
selves a house, together with some workshops 
and outhouses, wrought at their trades, and 
met with good sale for the articles they made." 

The Cape of Good Hope was visited by 
George Smitd in 1736, who, on his arrival, after 
the manner of others, *' fixed a spot for settle- 
ment and proceeded to build a hut and plant 
a garden/' 

The method adopted by these remarkable 
men in their work is thus beyond question. It 
was essentially the same in all the three great 
missionary epochs. The revival of spiritual 
religion under Whitefield and Wesley was 
brought to this country in a like manner. A 
carpenter who wrought at his trade, a captain 
in his majesty's service, and a farmer were the 
earliest agents in this work. 

The self-supporting plan for missions is as 
old as Christianity, and the Church has won all 
its great triumphs in the past by the use of 
this method. 

The objection is sometimes made to self- 



Methods. 157 

supporting missions that they entail needless 
and unreasonable hardship on those who carry 
them on. Strangely enough, the objection 
which history brings against them is the pos- 
session of too much wealth and the tendency 
to overmuch ease. Augustine and his forty 
companions went to Britain like Jacob to Beer- 
sheba, with a staff only. So much in harmony 
was their experience with that of those who, 
going out under like circumstance, ^^ lacked 
nothing/* that the first troublesome question 
which arose, concerning which advice was 
sought from Rome, was about the use and dis- 
posal of the property the Church had gained. 
The Franciscan fathers on the Pacific coast 
encountered the same difficulty. Father Juni- 
pero Serra, the pioneer, is represented as stand- 
ing on the deck of the vessel that bore him from 
Mexico to California having on his person his 
entire possessions, which were a garment of 
cloth, bound about the loins with a hempen 
cord, and a crucifix. His successors became 
great land owners and cattle graziers, and forgot 
the true object of the mission in overmuch 
prosperity. 

The Roman Catholic missions in Mexico 



158 Christian Missions. 

and the efforts of many of the pioneers of the 
apostoHc Church met the same fate. The 
fact that those who thus take their lives in 
their hands have no vices to consume their 
resources or to hinder their labors, and that such 
manifest self-sacrifice calls forth liberal gifts, has 
made the self-supporting plan the most suc- 
cessful financial policy — even to the extreme 
of danger. 

The same plan seems to offer the only feasi- 
ble mode of expansion commensurate with 
the demands of the work and the opening 
doors. 

The gifts of the churches of Great Britain 
to the cause of missions during a decade w^ere 
as follows : 



I873-I877 


(Average per year) 


£1,047,809 


1878-1882 


({ (( (( 


1,100,462 


I883-I887 


(t n n 


1,218,163 



The gift of this most Christian country to the 
cause of missions is at a stand, and to many it 
seems as if the limit had been reached. Three 
million dollars contributed annually by the 
churches of the United States is certainly far 
from the sum which may be reasonably expected 
in the future, but there is a limit which must 



Methods. 159 

some day be reached and which some think to 
be in sight. 

On the other hand, it is admitted by all that 
the work in pagan lands is only begun. Many 
missionaries are the sole means of Christian 
instruction to more than a million souls; and 
what are these among so many ? Where there 
is one Christian worker there should be one 
hundred, and where there is no one there 
should be ten. We have truly only been play- 
ing at the work of evangelization. 

But how is such an expansion possible ? By 
the method most now in use it is not to be ex- 
pected. Allowing the gifts of the churches to 
increase at the rate expected by the most san- 
guine, and this to be supplem.ented by the 
efforts of churches formed on native soil, still 
the sum is but an approximation to the 
amount needed. But heroism and self-sacri- 
fice among twenty million Christians are not 
easily exhausted. 

If six hundred poor exiles could on self- 
supporting lines send out from Herrnhut so 
many successful workers, what might twenty 
million Christians do working in the same 
way? 



i6o Christian Missions. 

The Salvation Army claims to have three 
thousand foreign missionaries, or more than 
half as many as all the rest of Christendom put 
together. Allowing that many of these are 
inexperienced and incompetent yet they man- 
age to live, largely through means obtained 
where they labor. This shows that the plan 
of self-support is not only possible in most 
cases, but admits of boundless expansion. 

The supply of men has generally been in ex- 
cess of that of money, and increases according 
to the measure of sacrifice demanded. A call 
for one or ten thousand young men from En- 
gland or America to go out, as did the apostles, 
the monks of Columba, or the humble w^orkers 
of Herrnhut, would not be unheeded. If 
there is any thing that would unlock the coffers 
of unused wealth in the Church, and pour it 
out in lavish waste, like Mary's box of oint- 
ment, it is such a move as this. The sacrifice 
of the missionary, as well as the merit of his 
cause, has helped the Missionary Society to 
such resources as it has had, but the prying 
eyes of scribbling travelers have been looking 
in on the comfortable homes of the missionary, 
and his lot no longer calls forth special com- 



Methods. i6i 

miseration among the well-informed. In this 
the missionary societies have only shown com- 
mon business prudence in looking after the 
comfort of those whom they employed, with 
an eye to their highest efficiency and long con- 
tinuance in the work. 

Nevertheless Christianity needs heroes and 
martyrs in the missionary work to inspire the 
self-sacrifice of the Church, and this martyr 
missions can supply. The day is, perhaps, not 
far off when the voluntary and self-supporting 
method by which the Church has won most of 
her missionary success in the past will again 
take its place as the plan chiefly relied on in 
the last great struggle with paganism and 

antichrist. 
11 



i62 Christian Missions. 



XL 

SUCCESS. 

Vexilla Regis proclerent 
Fulget crucis mysterium. 

The fact that those who support the cause 
of missions are business men, accustomed to 
business methods, explains the demand so 
often made for an exhibit of the results of 
Christian missions up to date. It seems reason- 
able, at least from a commercial stand-point, 
that after a series of years in which assessments 
have been levied with great regularity, there 
should come a time for the declaration of a 
dividend, or at least for an accounting and 
summing up of results. Unfortunately for this 
way of looking at things, we do not occupy 
the relation of business proprietors in the cause 
of missions, but only that of servants under a 
master or soldiers under a general. ^^ Whatso- 
ever he saith under you, do it " sums up our 
duty in the case. Though we could see no 
outcome, our labors may be necessary ^^ for a 



Success. 163 

witness against them '* to make it clear to all 
that the Judge of all the earth had done right, 
having done for his vineyard all that he 
could. 

In undertaking to sum up the results of mis- 
sionary labor we find it difficult to reduce to 
statistics or to express in figures or words 
the most cherished results. The power of the 
most approved steam-engine is accurately 
known, and stated as equal to that of a given 
number of horses, and the brilliancy of the 
most powerful electric light is known as equal 
to the light of a given number of candles; but 
no one attempts to reduce to figures the power 
of the moon to attract, as, for instance, the 
tides, or of the sun to give light. The great 
forces are imponderable and immeasurable, as 
is the effect of the lives of truly great men, 
like John Knox or Savonarola. The richest 
and most permanent results of missionary 
labor are those which do not appear in the 
table of missionary statistics. The number of 
members reported this year may by persecution 
or apostasy be much less the next, and the 
missionary property of this year be consumed 
by fire before the next report, but the gradual 



164 Christian Missions. 

leavening of the mass by the Gospel, the ton- 
ing up of society along lines before neglected, 
the air of doubt and suspicion that gathers 
about the worship of idols, the lessening of the 
tone of contempt, and the absence of the old 
assumption of superiority, the willing ear, and 
sometimes the hunger and thirst for hearing 
the word of God — these are effects that abide 
and are important. What does not appear in 
the table of statistics is greater than that which 
does. 

The demand for facts and figures, if insisted 
upon, may readily be met by pointing to the 
entire body of Christianity in all lands, which 
is altogether a result of missionary labor. In 
the literature created by Christianity, the 
benevolent institutions called into being, the 
colleges and seminaries founded, the churches 
built, the wealth created, the Sunday-schools 
organized, and the members enrolled, the lover 
of the exact in religion may revel in facts and 
figures to any extent he wishes. Separate 
undertakings for the evangelization of single 
races may readily be traced, and results of 
vast magnitude found to have grown out of 
missionary labor. Christianity in Europe, 



Success. 165 

Britain, or the United States owes its exist- 
ence to the missionary. 

The actual results of the modern movement 
to evangelize pagan peoples, as given in the 
missionary year-book, are matter of just pride. 
We have only to remember that the present 
movement is less than a century old ; that 
when Dr. Ryland bade the young Carey, who 
was pleading for a Gospel among the heathen, 
to '^ sit down, when God wants the heathen 
converted he w^ill attend to it," he was giving 
expression to a nearly unanimous sentiment, 
which showed that the Church had first to 
be converted to foreign missions ; that every 
pagan land was at that time hermetically 
sealed against the Gospel ; that Christianity 
was in desperate straits to maintain its spirit- 
uality and even existence. With this in mind, 
the triumphs of missions are not only satisfac- 
tory but marvelous. It is useless to expect 
some travelers to find any fruit of missionary 
labor, because they have no eyes to see or ex- 
perience to qualify them to know of its char- 
acter if brought to their attention. Professor 
Darwin, whose accuracy as an observer no one 
will question, was an example of another class. 



i66 Christian Missions. 

While with the Beagle on her voyage he saw 
enough of missionary labor in Terre del Fuego, 
a most unpromising land from which to expect 
a favorable report, to draw from him the con- 
fession : "• It is most wonderful ; and it shames 
me, as I always prophesied failure. It is a 
grand success.** Over against the testimony 
of travelers of the former kind as to what they 
did not see we may safely put the more posi- 
tive witness of Mr. Darwin and thousands of 
others as to what they did see. 

The statistics of foreign missions are easily 
accessible and are w^orthy of careful study. 
A few facts seem to be established : 

I. Not only has there been marked progress 
but as signal victories as Christianity has ever 
won have been made in the cause of missions 
during the present century. The progress of 
the Gospel in the first three centuries has been 
reckoned as one of the evidences of its divine 
origin. The proof of the heavenly origin of 
the Gospel must then be accumulating, for the 
progress in the mission fields during the nine- 
teenth century surpasses that in either of the 
first three cenuries. Gibbon estimates the 
number of Christians at the close of the first 



Success. 167 

century as 100,000. In a single country, that 
of India, only seventy years after Carey's first 
baptism of a convert, there were 73,000 native 
Christian converts, and a nominal Christian 
population among the natives of over 300,000. 
Taking all the mission fields together, it is 
beyond doubt that the triumphs of the Gospel 
in this century equal any that went before. 

2. The rate of progress increases year by 
year. In India, for instance, the number of na- 
tive Christians was approximately as follows : 

1830 27,000 

1S50 102.951 

1S60 213,370 

1S70 313,369 

iSSo 528,590 

18S9 800,000 

In Japan, ^Madagascar, the Sandwich Islands, 
Fiji, the ratio of increase was even greater. 
This means the certain and speedy conquest of 
paganism, if present conditions remain. 

3. The progress of Christianity in the East 
equals that which was made by other religions 
in their most brilliant eras, as for instance 
Buddhism or ]\Ioslemism in their early stages. 
Vast regions of the East were soon overrun by 



i68 Christian Missions. 

Moslem arms, but this is not to be confounded 
with the conversion of the people to that faith, 
which was much slower. Buddhism grew rap- 
idly, especially during the life-time of Gautama, 
but Christianity surpasses either at its best. 
This is surprising when we remember that the 
tenets of most ethnic religions are carefully 
adapted to the requirements of the natural 
heart and seldom demand an altered life. 
Getting religion under such circumstances 
is so easy that it is no wonder that at times 
the progress is rapid, but not more so than of 
that religion which at the start says, *'* Except 
ye be converted, and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.'' 
4* Progress in the evangelization of pagan 
peoples is as rapid as can be made with safety. 
*^ Sudden effects in history," says John Stuart 
Mill, ^^ are generally superficial ; causes which go 
down deep into the roots of future events pro- 
duce the most serious parts of their effects only 
slowly and must have time to become a part of 
the familiar order of things.'' History plainly 
demonstrates that when progress has been too 
rapid a reaction always sets in. The trans- 
formation of society during the first three cent- 



Success. 169 

uries was of this character, and a reaction set 
in which for a time threatened to ruin all. The 
too speedy acceptance of the Gospel by the 
Saxons under Ethelbert was followed by a re- 
vival of paganism. The reformation of Luther 
was rapid and startling, but the reaction which 
came at the close testified that in the impor- 
tant matter of reconstructing religious thought 
among a people, the more haste sometimes 
means the less speed. Japan, to some, seems 
to be approaching the same danger-point. 
Seldom has any nation ever abandoned so 
hastily its old traditions, religious and polit- 
ical, and never perhaps without suffering the 
penalty which we hope the Land of the Rising 
Sun may escape. 

5. The attempt to introduce the Christian 
religion into the Orient has met at least with as 
rapid success as has the effort to introduce the 
arts and sciences, especially the appliances and 
inventions of the West. At the opening of this 
century the East was destitute of both West- 
ern science and religion. The tools of the 
workmen, the modes of travel, the homes, 
books, merchandise were rude as the religion. 
As to all the appliances of modern civilization 



I70 Christian Missions. 

Western nations have felt called upon to sup- 
ply the East, and sometimes at the cannon's 
mouth have demanded open ports for trade. 
Commerce has pressed into every open door 
and unlocked some that were shut. The mis- 
sionary, on the other hand, has gone out single- 
handed. Yet the nations of the East have ac- 
cepted Christian ideas and ways as rapidly as 
they have as a rule taken to the fruits of West- 
ern science. Are they slow to accept the New 
Testament? Not more so than to adopt the 
Western plow or to substitute the spinning- 
jenny for the hand-loom. They have shown 
great conservatism, but have not confined it to 
religion. 

6. The progress of Christianity in the East is 
rapid when we consider the feebleness of the 
means used for its spread. A few missionaries 
here and there have been sent into lands where 
the population is immense. Sometimes a single 
man has been left to cope with the doubt and 
opposition of a province containing millions of 
souls. It is a law of mechanics, for the arrange- 
ment of pulleys for raising great bodies, that 
what is gained in the small expenditure of 
force is lost in time required for the operation. 



Success. 171 

To expect any other result in the moral eleva- 
tion of a people is to be unreasonable. If we 
choose to be sparing in the amount of money 
used and in the number of men in the field, 
let us expect results only of corresponding 
magnitude. On the whole, the words of the 
old Latin hymn, which stand at the head of 
this chapter, were never more true than now : 

"The banners of heaven's King advance, 
The mystery of the cross shines forth." 



INDEX. 



Anglo-Saxon ancestors, our ; their 
early condition, 11,12; conver- 
sion of, 13-16 ; strength of char- 
acter, 18. 

Annihilation, taught and desired, 64. 

Athens, ancient religion of, 21. 

Augustin, 14. 

Bible, not appreciated in the Occi- 
dent, 35-37. . , T. J 

Brahmanism, struggle with Bud- 
dhism, 26. 

Buddhism, origin of, 26 ; in China, 
29. 

Carnegie, Andrew, view of the 

world's need, 70. 
Charity among pagans whimsical, 

102. 
China, Protestant missions in, 125 ; 

treaty with the United States, 

Chinese, defect in character of, 58. 
Cholera, how cured by Chinese phy- 
sicians, 105. 
Christianity an Oriental religion, 

.38: 

Christianity, early triumphs of, 144. 

Chrysostom's testimony to Buddha, 
.38. 

Coifi, why a Christian, 96. 

Commerce and Christianity, 90. 

Commercial value of paganism, 
54-56. 

Cost of paganism, 61. 

Criticism of missions, 140. 

Custom-house in China, why man- 
aged by foreigners, 58. 

Darwin's testimony to the value of 
missions, 113, 166. 

Diana of the Kpheslans, how su- 
perseded, 23. 

Disease, pagan remedies for, 105. 

Dress, folly of adopting native, 99. 

Drummond, Henr}'-, appeal to the 
United States, 112. 



Egypt, ancient religion of, 24. 

Ethics, ignored by pagan religions, 
47- 

Exodus of Israel a lesson to mod- 
ern nations, 71. 

Fate, Brahmanic doctrine of, 50. 

Fear the inspiration of ancient relig- 
ions, 43. 

Federation of the world, 74. 

Franciscan missions on Pacific coast, 
157. 

Free trade and tariff, 74. 

Gibbon, disbelief of in missions, 
33- 

Gold, an international god, 93. 

Government oppressive in the Ori- 
ent, 109. 

Gregory, 13. 

Herrnhut as a missionary center, 

150.. 
Humanitarian view, 100. 
Human race, solidarity of, 68. 

Immigration, effect of, 73. 

India, ancient religion of, 25 ; war 
overruled for the good of, 84. 

Indians, character of, 120, 121 ; in- 
justice toward, 122 ; treaties 
with, 123. 

Interest, rate of in heathen lands, 
55- 

International law, old formula, 69. 

lona as a missionary center, 148. 

Japan, religious revolution in, i6g, 

Keshub Chender Sen's testimony to 
Jesus, 36. 

Medical science, ignorance of in 

Orient, 104. 
Methods of missionary work, 140. 
Mexico, war with, 137. 
Missionaries, many kinds of, 98. 



174 



Index. 



Missionary'- spirit wanting in ethnic 

religions, 24. 
Mohammedanism, triumphs of, 24. 
Moravian missions, 150. 

Napoleon, policy of, 70. 
National seclusion dangerous, 75. 
Nations, mutual relations of, 68. 
New Testament idea of missions, 78. 

Obelisk, a witness, 24. 

Old Testament view of missions, 78. 

Oriental Christ, the, 36. 

Orientals, more religious than the 
Occidentals, 39 ; want of enter- 
prise among, 91. 

Paganism as characterized by Bish- 
op Foster, 77. 

Pagan religions, costly, 61, 87 ; now 
corrupt, 66, 67. 

Poverty in the far East, 107. 

Railroads and civilization, 72. 
Rock Springs outrage on Chinese, 

Rome, ancient religion of, 20, 21. 

Salvation Army work, 160. 
Sandwich Islands, the Gospel in, 92. 
Science, superiority of Western, 94. 
Scientific objections to missions, 33, 
Selfishness, dangerous, 75 ; as a mis- 
sionary ally, 97. 



Sickness, want of care In, in the 

East, 103. 
Slave-trade in Africa, iii. 
Solidarity of humanity, 68. 
Sorrow, pagan religions no comfort 

in, 63. 
Statesman, description of a great, 

74. . 

Statesmanship and missions, 114, 
Statistics of mission work, 163, 
Steam-ships and commerce, 72. 
Stipendiary and martyr missions, 

Strength of Protestantism in United 

States, 117. 
Success of modern missions, 166. 

Tariff and Free Trade, 74. 

Thomson, Bishop, on Character- 
istics of Orientals, 39. 

Treaties, between Christian and 
pagan lands, 57 ; with the In- 
dians, 123. 

Volney's view of religion, 33. 

Wars, of nineteenth century, 80 ; re- 
sults secured by, 83 ; modern, 
how brought about, 85 ; some 
things worse than, 87 ; inferior- 
ity of Orientals in the art of, 94, 

Woman's lot in the East, T09. 

Works, salvation by, a tenet of all 
ethnic religions, 41, 



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